More Wheely-Thing-With-Bells-on Theorum
(Adventures in Nerdvana)
Chapter Thirteen© Chuck Lorré Productions, with a necessary nod to CBS/"Here's Lunch!" productions, to Douglas Neil Adams, to Sir Terry Pratchett, and original ideas by me. My ideas; their characters; their original settings; Pasadena belongs to everyone, and Caltech is its own domain. Welcome to a multidirectional hyper-crossover for just this one episode.
Possible titles (feel free to devise your own: PM me with them? Namechecks will be given)
The Alienation at 3,065 Parsecs Quantification
(Clue: Mick Jagger as astrophysicist)
The Trillian As Waitress Counterfactual
this is your author speaking! Thank you for the reviews, much appreciated. As I seem to be on a roll with this one, may I say there is NOW AN OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACK to this fic? (1)
FF won't let me post a link - rats. But go to You-Tube, u-Tube, et c, and look for my other identity of Pragmatist23. There is a playlist of all songs (so far) that directly or indirectly get referenced here. You may like at least SOME of them.
and "Soft Kitty" is in there too, performed by Kaley Cuoco (Penny). Thank you( OK, so she got married. I hear the crackle of breaking hearts all around me. Sorry, can't help that, but you know, guys, there's a whole sub-infinity of alternate universes where she's still single. Or, for those of an Alice Band temperament, single and gay. You're likely to be in those too. Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting it is, then.)
Prologue:
Aboard the International Space Station:
Astronaut Mike Massimo looked idly out of a cabin window and regarded a deep space punctuated with random pinpoints of steady light. A big, bluff and self-confident man in peak physical condition, he was rarely given to introspection. But here on the opposite side to the windows currently overlooking Earth, he looked out into deep space, trying to dismiss an uneasy feeling that something out there was looking back. A motion, a speck, a mere flicker, made him look out to a point in space towards the constellation of Orion. He blinked, eliminating the possibility it was a floater in his corneal fluid or some sort of after-image in his retina. Had Orion's sword-belt suddenly spouted a fourth star? He watched for some time, wondering to alert Earth and ask if any land-based observatory was picking up a new nova. Or supernova? Then, discounting the idea of a distant star committing stellar suicide, he called for Dimitri, feeling like an utter Fruit Loop for doing so.
Lynwood, Long Island, New York.
A young-ish married couple were sitting on the couch in their living room. It was an unremarkable suburban American home almost at the neck of Long Island, where houses were still just about affordable to a guy making above-average pay. Go West and you were back in the City. Anywhere further West than Queens– forget it. Go East and you ended up in big-money real estate until you got to the Point. Lynwood was about as far into the Island as these folks could afford, and even then his father had been uncharacteristically generous.
Let us focus on the wife. She is casually dressed in a yellow wool overshirt, the sort the English call a cardigan, over a white tee. In her middle thirties, she is strikingly attractive, with well-formed features and lustrous almost black hair. If it wasn't for the fact the daily attrition shows in her face – of being homemaker Mom to three demanding kids, and to an erratic husband who is probably the biggest kid of them all – she would be insanely beautiful. And there were other reasons too.
She leaned back and sighed, enjoying a moment of closeness to her husband, who for all the things that make her hair gray ahead of time, is the guy she actually chose to marry. To the former Ms. Whelan, this is important.
She was reminiscing about a recent family holiday in Italy.
"Wouldn't be nice, if we could hold onto that feeling of just enjoying every day?" she asked, leaning closer to him.
Why don't we just go upstairs and enjoy the rest of today?" he replied, hopefully.
Regard the husband. Tall, but by no means the tallest in his family. He is casually dressed in an unbuttoned and untucked blue overshirt over a blue tee. A randomly selected panel of female judges might grade him "passably attractive", but that's about it. He has the sort of enormous nose suited perfectly to his ethnicity – it is even called "Roman". His general demeanour is of a big clumsy dog which has left the puppy stage behind, but which can by no means be called "mature."
She turned and smiled at him.
"Okay." she said, and got up, taking him by the hand and leading him to the stairs. He followed, like an eager juvenile dog who has just for the first time recognised the significance of a certain scent on the breeze. Halfway up, she paused.
"Did you hear that?"
There was a noise in the distance. Getting nearer. And louder...
Earth Space.
Penny found herself trying to scream through gritted teeth. She decided that she would never forgive Sheldon Cooper for this, ever. It did not help that Sheldon, the guy who'd caused all this, was sitting next to her looking completely untouched by it all and saying dumb-ass Mr Spock things like "Fascinating!"
In front of them, dials were spinning like the rolling tokens behind the windows of a Vegas arcade machine. The glassy screen of the omniscope was whirling and spinning and going through more psychedelic colours than a whole squatful of hippies in a VW microbus. HEX the supercomputer had not answered any of her frantic calls for help, reassurance, advice or even some sort of idea as to what was freakin' well going wrong. She had come to think of HEX as a supercompetent alien intelligence, based on some sort of really advanced computer technology years ahead of anything Bill Gates was currently capable of.
And after three days with the guys, Sheldon Cooper had somehow managed to freakin' well crash the system and give HEX a Blue Screen of Death. Nice goin', Sheldon.
"I wish I knew where we are." Sheldon remarked, conversationally.
"I wish we were where we were, Sheldon!" Penny screamed, furiously.
"I do not believe we are in any danger. Penny." Sheldon said, mildly. "If you recall, HEX said he can keep any passenger on the Machine in a technological bubble that preserves atmospheric temperature and optimum heat. Indeed, the limits of the bubble may be guessed at by the unfortunately opaque gently rounded wall surrounding us. It makes an ovoid form, like an egg."
"Yes, but what freakin' happens when we need to eat? Or drink? Or visit the bathroom?" Penny demanded. "I don't see no on-board bathroom cubicle, Sheldon!"
"You seem disturbed, Penny. Would you like me to sing "Soft Kitty" to you? It can be extraordinarily reassuring in times of need."
"No, I don't want you to song "Soft Kitty" to me! HEX! HEX! Can you hear me?"
The console was settling 's heart pounded less as she realised the erratic, and as far as she could tell, forward, motion of the Travelling Machine was slowing. There was a burst of static and crackle in the air, and something she presumed was music started to sound. Within the confines of the bubble, it was loud.
Well, I!
Just took a ride!
In a Silver Machine!And I'm still feeling mean!
"HEX?" Penny shouted. "Does this mean you're still there? And you might wanna turn the music down? Or change it? It sounds kinda like a bikers' bar in here!"
++Hello, Penny.++I apologise for the inconvenience++All my run-time has been taken up with regaining control of the machine and delivering you safely to a place as near to Pasadena, California, as I can reliably manage++. Regrettably, Doctor Cooper's ill-advised actions precipitated an emergency which sent the Machine on a completely random course.++I am going to have to recalibrate all its functions so as to safely and accurately return you home.++In the meantime, here is a selection of music.++
"HEX?" Sheldon inquired. Penny was sure the machine intelligence sighed audibly. Everybody who dealt with Sheldon ended up sighing like that. Sooner or later.
++Yes, Doctor Cooper?++
"Why can we not see out? Nothing is transparent. There are no windows."
++I wished to spare you further alarm.++ You were translocated from your apartment in Pasadena, California, to a point in the same time, but nearly a million miles away in space, practically instantaneously.++The view would be disorientating without advance warning.++If you wish, I can remove the opacity?++Stand by.++You will witness the opacity gradually fading and transparency resuming in five, four, three, two, one, seconds.++ I will be available for emergencies but will be busy restoring full functionality to the Machine.++Here is some light music.++
"Oh, my..." Sheldon breathed, as the starfield appeared bright against a black background. Penny screamed, seeing nothing apparently solid underneath her feet.
"Where's the floor? Where's the frikkin' floor, Sheldon?" Penny shrieked.
++It is impossible to fall out of the machine, Penny++ HEX reassured her. ++The protective bubble is solid and nothing can leave it unless the machine is switched off.++
Penny looked at Sheldon. Doubtfully.
++The consule is now disactivated, Penny.++I thought this was wise.++Doctor Cooper may poke and prod all he likes, but all keys are dead. It may now only be activated at my instigation.++
"Thank you, HEX". Penny said. She settled down to enjoy the view.
++Do not look directly at your planet's star.++ HEX advised them. ++I have introduced protective screening to block out its more deadly rays which in the absence of a diffusing atmosphere will be stronger.++
"Don't try to sunbathe. Sunburn will be terminal here." Sheldon translated for her.
The music playing was a combination of swirly electronics combined with a plucked string instrument that sounded like a banjo. Periodically, it swelled out to synthesised and unconvincing-sounding horns. Penny vaguely recognised it from somewhere. She associated it with the guys. Sheldon looked up, happy, and exclaimed "HEX! How appropriate!"
++I thought you would like it, Sheldon++I am sorry I cannot provide towels or a Universal Thumb.++
Penny shook her head and studied the opposite side of the view. Then she looked across and saw a large silver can, with delicate squared-off wings, swimming in space. She jumped.
"Sheldon.." she said.
He glanced round.
"That's not a UFO, Penny. We're within a thousand yards of the International Space Station."
"I know what it is, Sheldon, Howard was there for a month!"
"I never thought I'd see it from this close..."
Massimo turned, perplexed, to Dimitri Rezinov, who shrugged.
"What d'ya reckon it is?" he asked.
"Beats me, buddy."
They had seen a bright silver dot erupt out of Orion and grow by many sizes its initial magnitude. They had agreed it appeared to be heading toward them, but both had the uneasy feeling that it was something much closer to them that had grown in size. Now it had stopped in space, still silver, but resolving itself into something egg-shaped, the narrow end toward them.
"It's not likely to collide with us. Seems to have stopped." Massimo said, privately grateful he could put off alerting Ground Control. He wondered why their radars weren't picking anything up. Nobody was on the line asking for clarification and visual reports.
"I say we don't report this." Dimitri said. "Cosmograd aren't happy with guys who see UFO's. I'm not figuring to spent the rest of my career on a ground station on Novaya Zemlya."
"Siberia, huh?" Masimo asked.
"Arctic islands. Just north of Siberia and inside the Circle. Lead mines and no vodka." He shuddered.
"Ah-huh. I report a UFO and my next posting is Nome. Alaska."
"Ah. We used to call it Further Siberia."
Both men thought of the practical jokes they'd worked on the flaky and excitable Fruit Loops. Like doing an EVA wearing alien masks inside their helmets, and knocking on his sleeping quarter window. It didn't seem so funny now.
"Are you seeking to make radio contact?" Dimitri prompted. Massimo was fiddling with the receptor controls. So far, only random static consistent with cosmic and background radiation. Then both men leapt.
Do you wanna ride?
See yourself goin' by
The other side of the sky -
In a Silver Machine!
To ride sine waves in time!
It's an electric line
To your zodiac sign!
"Govno! That was loud!" exclaimed Dimitri. "Turn it down, Mass!"
"Somebody's putting us on, man." Massimo muttered. "You will not believe this..."
Dimitri followed his buddy's gaze. There was something out there that looked like a cross between a model T-Ford and a bedstead. With two people in it. Neither was wearing a suit and they seemed remarkably unaffected by the freezing cold vacuum of space. One, the sort of well-stacked blonde you would never even dream of kicking out of bed, was standing up and waving. She was dressed like some sorta waitress, as if she'd just stepped off shift at a diner. The guy with her was long and thin and definitely suggested "alien". Hell, if his skin had been gray, he'd have been the classic gray alien the UFO nutjobs went on about. And didn't they also talk about "Nordics"? The other one was blonde and nordic...man, was she ever Nordic, he could let himself be abducted by a Nordic who looked like that... but she was frantically jabbing a thumb, as if she needed a lift, or somethin'.
The radio crackled on again. This wasn't an explosion of heavy rock music. Instead it was softer, more melodic, even if that was a banjo...
Dimitri put his head in his hands.
"It's a put-on, man." he groaned, softly. ". Govno. Govno. Govno!(2) Ground Control ain't talking to us because they're doing this. Gotta be a projected hologram of some sort."
"But if it isn't?"
"Come on, man. That music's the Eagles. "Journey of the Sourceror." You're American, man, and I'm telling you? Theme music? Science Fiction show? Govno!"
He stalked away.
"Hey, where are you going?" Massimo asked. He was still entranced with the blonde.
"To find a towel, man! To cover the window!"
After a while, the improbable spacecraft flickered and vanished.
"Where are going now, HEX?" asked Sheldon.
"Please, Jesus. Let it be 2311 North los Robles." muttered Penny. If only those astronauts had thrown her a rope, or a traction beam, or something... weren't spacecraft supposed to have traction beams fitted as standard? They were in every freakin' other episode of Star Trek... she felt slightly cheated. She could'a hitched a ride back to Earth from there.
++I believe Penny will feel happier with visibly solid ground under her feet.++Besides, I require a little additional time to be sure the guidance thaumology is restored. Before I take the risk of navigating to Earth, I will attempt to reach a currently nearer objective of my choosing. ++ Stand by. Impact in..."
"Impact?" Penny screamed.
And then things flickered, shook, contracted and expanded all at the same time.
"Ugggh." said Penny.
"We must have travelled through hyperspace." Sheldon said, excitedly.
++That is one term for the transition, Doctor Cooper++There are others.++ We call it "thlabber".++
"Interesting term." Sheldon said,looking round him. Dust was falling back to earth around them. If indeed they were on Earth. He frowned. The dust was settling back in an odd sort of way...
++Thlabber relates both to the process and the state of mind engendered during the process++ HEX said. ++There can be some discomfort and a certain existential doubt.++But Penny appears to be recovering quickly.++
Sheldon observed her dispassionately.
++It has been remarked that passing through hyperspace is like drinking a glass of water++ HEX said. ++But from the point of view of the glass of water.++
"Fit the Second of the original radio show of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy." observed Sheldon. "When Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are seeking escape from a doomed Earth, and the Vogon ship, upon which they are travelling, makes the hyperspatial jump to Barnard's Star."
++Just so, Sheldon.++A lot of truth is concealed in humour.++It is a shame Douglas Adams is no longer here to realise that++.(3)
"Where the frick are we now?" Penny asked, testily. "This ain't Pasadena. Ain't even Kansas."
++I have expanded the size of the protective bubble++ HEX said. ++It now extends some way underground encasing part of the surface of this planetoid, enabling you to walk around.++
The horizon was black. The ground under their feet was barely lit. The stars in the sky were sharp pinpricks that remained constant and did not twinkle.
++There will be a short intermission whilst I perform a systems check and recalibrate.++ I will endeavour to be quick, as while I can maintain temperature and atmospheric pressure within the bubble, it only contains a finite supply of breathable oxygen.++
"What the freak!" Penny shouted. HEX continued, blithely,
++You may explore the lunar surface within the confines of the protective field while you wait.++As before, I will play appropriate light music.++
Penny looked at Sheldon.
"Did HEX just say..."
"Penny. We're on the MOON!" Sheldon said, excited.
"Yeah, right. Make a... moonpie or something, hon. It's a bit dark, though."
As if on cue, music started.
Breathe! Breathe in the air...
This brought to mind an awkward fact about their current situation.
"HEX? Different music, please!"
"It's appropriate, Penny. We are on the Dark Side Of The Moon, almost." said Sheldon. "I would guess the twilight zone acting as a boundary between the two. The landscape is characteristic of the far smoother, less cratered, Dark Side..."
HEX switched tracks.
Far, far, far away, way
People heard him say, say
I will find a way, way
There will come a day, day
Something will be done...
Johanna had taken both Leonard's hands in hers. Ponder noted she could be amazingly gentle if she chose. But wasn't gentleness the prerogative of the strong?
"I hev every confidence HEX will bring them beck." she said, quietly. "If he can't, nobody can."
Leonard nodded, wanting to believe it. Ponder reflected that this had been the first time he'd ever heard the computer swear. And it had been provoked by Sheldon Cooper.
He and Johanna had tried, frequently, to raise HEX via the IPODs and cellphones. But the devices were currently just ordinary early 21st-century American technology, with no sign of having ever been occupied by an alien superintelligence.
For those left behind in Apartment 4a, all they could do was to wait. Bernadette was comforting a distraught, or at least inconvenienced, Amy. Howard was not inclined to make silly jokes. Raj was quiet and Lucy, for want of anything else, had got a drawing pad out and was sketching, things and people.
"If, you know, you end up having to stay here. We'll help you settle." Howard had said. It was genuine. It was sincere. It spoke for all of them.
"Will people on your own world miss you?" Bernadette had asked. Both Johanna and Ponder had nodded.
There really wasn't much more to be said.
"So we're on the Moon. We're on the godamn Moon." Penny said, flatly. "The Moon, Sheldon. The Moon."
"I hear you." Sheldon said. "Repetition does not make it more real, Penny." He paused and watched. "And do bear in mind..."
Penny swung her legs off the seat of the machine, swung round, and tried to take a step. She shrieked as momentum propelled her further than she expected. Penny bounced off the invisible forcefield and asked, rhetorically, "What the FREAK!"
"One small step for a woman. One extremely long step taken by a woman who has not grasped her apparent mass is one-sixth of what it is on Earth, owing to the weaker gravitational field."
"Sheldon!" she protested. Then she did some quick math.
"Hey, I only weigh twenty pounds here?"
"Just so, Penny. Although I am more fascinated by the demonstrable fact HEX can hum like Pink Floyd."
Penny shook her head. Then grinned for the first time.
One small step for a woman...
"Sheldon, you're into flags?"
She retrieved from the pocket of her waitress apron one of the small, crudely made, American flags the Cheesecake Factory used as table decorations for birthday celebrations for kids. She'd pocketed it when clearing a table down after a family party. The guys at work thought it was a sick joke these little American flags came in a crate marked "Made in China".
She crouched down, picked up two middling-heavy rocks and put them in her apron pockets. Then as an afterthought she added a handful or two of moon dust. She then moulded some of the moondust into a little moonpie. She stuck the table-top flag, printed on coarse paper and stuck to a popsicle stick, as firmly into the mound as she could. Sheldon had by now rounded the Machine and was watching with his arms folded.
"Get round here now, Sweetie. This is a solemn moment. HEX?"
++Yes, Penny?++
"First woman on the moon, hon. Play the music!"
HEX chose exactly the right piece. Chords sounded out, familiar to Penny ever since her patriotic father had made damn sure she knew them.
Oh say can you see, by the Dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed by the twilight's last gleaming?
Sheldon had grasped instantly, and even he had a hand on his heart and was singing.
They got to
o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!
and Penny realised they were heading into Difficult Second Verse Territory. Without fifty thousand other people around to prompt her at a football game, and ideally all the words written out, she knew she'd flunk this one.
She left it to Sheldon, who was word perfect, and after On the shore dimly seen, she elected to hum the rest.
"Sheldon? Sheldon? Two verses should do it, I think."
"The first woman on the moon." Sheldon said, looking down at the flag with reverence. "But it isn't over until the fat lady sings!"
"Sheldon, I'll try to get up to twenty-one pounds just for you!"
He's from Texas. They got over losing the Civil War better than most. Sure he'll know every word of every verse. Mary and his daddy would have made sure of that.
"First woman on the moon! I sure am, Sheldon!" Penny said, proudly. "But who can I ever tell?"
Sheldon produced a cell phone.
"You'll be way out of signal here, Earthpie!" she objected, shaking her head.
"But I can still take photographs." he pointed out. "And Earth's rising, look!"
++I believe I can take you home now++ Hex said.
"Not now, HEX!" said Penny, as Sheldon took his shots.
++We must leave soon. I personally do not require oxygen, but you two have been using it at an alarming rate.++ The only place to replenish it, or for this protective shell to be irrelevant, is on Earth++
Penny posed for another shot, with the lunar horizon and the rising Earth behind her. Light from the rising planet was diffusing the bleak lunar surface.
++The first signs of suffocation are headache, rising bodily temperature, inability to think clearly...++
"Yeah, we get it, HEX." Penny said. "Take us home?"
They departed from the Moon to the strains of Pink Floyd's Set the Controls to The Heart of The Sun. She hoped it wasn't meant literally.
++I believe I can return you to the United States on the same day you left.++ said HEX. ++The controls are not perfectly calibrated and require fine balancing++However, I had to set this against the very real danger of your dying horribly in deep space through asphyxiation.++
"But we may in that case have been picked up one second away from death by the starship Heart of Gold, via its Infinite Improbability Drive!"
"Don't hold your breath, Sheldon." muttered Penny. She knew the reference; she'd once bought Leonard a first edition Douglas Adams. She'd also been forced to watch the BBC TV adaptation. She wondered how Trillian had put up with her assortment of nerds and geeks.
"But Penny, holding their breath is exactly what Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent had to do to stand a chance of being rescued by the fabulous star-ship Heart of Gold!" Sheldon objected.
Penny looked at the now-opaque again wall of the bubble. Being stuck in deep space was bad enough. Being stuck in deep space with a science-fiction geek...
++Arrival in the continental USA now assured++ HEX broke in. ++ Advisory: the landing could be a little bit bumpy.++
Penny and Sheldon spoke together.
"Can we be a little more precise than just "the Continental USA"?"
"Whaddya mean, "bumpy"?"
"It's a big continent."
"How bumpy is "bumpy"?"
"Hey, my cellphone works again!"
And then there was a bump and a crash.
A very big crash.
Johanna had asked Leonard to find her the Sandman series. To take his mind away from the appalling prospect of losing Penny, he was explaining the graphic novels' setting and conceit.
"The entities who share the running of the world ell hev names beginning with "D"." she said, examining the rich and detailed artwork. "There is Dream, Despair, Desire, end others, whose youngest sister is Death. She seems very sympathetic, Leonard."
"And of course it all fits into a series of inter-related stories." Leonard said."Everything affects everything else."
"Yes." she said. "It does."
Johanna thought of Susan Sto Helit. For obvious reasons, the sort she felt thankful for, she had never met Susan while she was On Duty, so to speak. But off duty, Susan was a quiet, serious, fiercely intelligent, young woman who did not take idiots gladly. Susan and the Lady Assassins got on well. They all used the same hairdresser, for one thing.(4) The Death of the Sandman world, while sharing some similarities, was not Susan Sto Helit. Ponder had guardedly agreed any leakage from Discworld was minimal. But he had paused on one page.
"That grimoire." he said. "book of magic drawn on the page there. It's called the Necrotelecomnicon." (5)
And then a cellphone rang. Leonard's. He jumped.
"Enswer it, Leonard" she prompted him. He did.
"Sheldon?" he shouted. "Where the photon are you? Is Penny there? Oh hell... Sheldon! Stay on the phone, will you!"
Leonard looked round at everyone.
"They have just crashed the machine. Through the wall of somebody's house. In New York. They are now running for it."
He slapped his free palm over his eyes and groaned.
Lynwood. Long Island. New York.
The couple who had paused in the act of going upstairs to spend some quality time together stood open-mouthed as the noise grew louder and nearer. Then the front wall of their living room exploded into brick, wood, plaster and rubble as some sort of vehicle crashed through. It crushed the couch the couple had lately been sitting on and ground to a halt.
There was a pause.
A very tall thin guy emerged from the dust cloud. He was holding a cellphone and talking to some guy named Leonard.
"Hey." was all the husband thought to say. His wife stood there with her lower jaw hanging open in surprise.
"Er...hi." said a very pretty blonde girl who got out of the other side of the vehicle. "Real sorry 'bout the mess."
There were voices outside. Getting nearer.
"Raymond? Raymond? Are you alright, dear? And are my grandchildren safe? We saw the crash."
It was the querulous voice of a elderly woman.
"Jeezalu, woman." a male voice said, impatiently. "Ain't you missin' somebody out there?"
"I don't think so, Frank." the same voice said again, but with a harder edge.
Penny grabbed Sheldon. "Come on! We gotta get out of here!"
She turned to the man on the stairs and gave him her warmest smile.
"This ain't Pasadena, California, right?"
"No. It's Lynwood. Long Island. New York." His voice was slightly reedy and nasal.
"Thanks. Raymond." Penny said, giving him her smile again. She hauled Sheldon away, stepping over the rubble and easily evading the elderly couple, the woman short and plump and not made for running, the man tall and bald but very definitely running to fat.
"ROBERT!" the older woman shrieked. "Stop those two! They nearly killed my Raymond! And my lovely grandchildren!"
"And Debra." a low bassy voice reminded her. "Mom, they nearly got Debra!"
"Yeah, her too." the woman said, indifferently, in a voice suggesting that her son could always get another wife, and Debra's loss, while sad, would be a lesser tragedy.
Penny took off down a suburban street that could have been Anytown America, except that it was set to New York grey.
Hey you two freaking maniacs! God-damn lousy stinkin' Californian hippy dropouts." Frank shouted after them.
"Dropout?" Sheldon cried back, stung. "Sir, I'll have you know my academic degrees include..."
"NOT NOW, SHELDON!" Penny shrieked. "We gotta get out of here!" She dragged him along.
And the largest policeman Penny had ever seen was running after them. Well, lumbering.
"STOP! Police pursuit!" the low bass voice grumbled.
The sight of him sparked something off the old primal Penny. Six-eight at least. Growly low voice. No fat on him. OK, he must be forty. If it wasn't for Moonpie here I could almost let him arrest me...
"We gotta split, Sheldon." Penny said. "Get outta here. Shake off the cop. We're in New York. Subway can't be far away. Get to the airport. Then get the first plane west, you get me?" They turned a corner.
To see the travelling machine sitting there, unscratched, in front of them.
++GET ON.++HURRY!++
Penny threw Sheldon into one seat and leapt into the other.
"But how did you..."
The air blurred and hazed around them as Sergeant Robert Barone turned the corner in hot pursuit.
"Damn, damn, damn!" he cursed. "Nobody's ever gonna believe this..."
He picked up something from the ground. It was a waitress's bill pad with the heading on each page
THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY
2 WEST COLORADO BOULEVARD
PASADENA
CALIFORNIA 91101
"Dad was right" he thought, pocketing the pad. (6) And hadn't the girl, the California beach-blonde, said something to Ray about "is this Pasadena?" Jeez, I'd sure love to book them and drug-test them...
++The energy field, the bubble, protects what is inside from the outside.++Therefore when we materialised inside that wall, the machine was unscathed but the wall was torn to pieces.++
"Yeah, but that poor guy had his house destroyed!" said Penny. "I feel kinda bad about that."
++I have checked the timelines.++Apparently Mr Raymond Barone of Lynwood, Long Island, New York, was fated to have his front wall destroyed in an accident today.++We merely pre-empted the fact that his own parents would have been the agents of destruction++
"What, that ugly old bald guy and the short fat fussy wife?" Penny said.
++They were just getting into the car as we materialised in Raymond and Debra Barone's wall.++ Had we not been there, a piece of careless reversing on the part of Mr Frank Barone would have garaged their car on their son's front room carpet. ++I will of course alter history so that this event happens as scheduled.++ Look, this is another consequence of Doctor Cooper's heedless messing with my controls.++ Nobody is injured, and Frank Barone is forced to pay the repair costs.++Now if you excuse me, I rather think that hard knock had a beneficial percussive maintainance effect on the travelling engine.++
"What?" asked Penny. Sheldon shrugged.
"He hit it, really hard. And everything works again."
And they rematerialized in Apartment 4a. Penny and Leonard hugged hard.
"Are you crying, Leonard?" Sheldon asked,with mild surprise.
"I thought I'd lost you for good..." Leonard said to Penny.
"Tougher stuff than that, sweetie." Penny said. "When you're ready to hear it I'll tell you where we've been. Got proof, too."
Amy was standing expectantly in front of Sheldon with her arms outspread. She seemed to be expecting him to realise something manifestly self-evident. And was irked that he hadn't.
"Sheldon, you ass." Leonard hissed.
Sheldon looked on in mild surprise.
"I fail to see what the fuss is about. I went away, I came back."
"JUST HUG HER, YOU IDIOT!" Penny shouted. She had just noticed a painful bruise in her upper arm, probably from being flung around inside the Machine. (7) Leonard's hug was irritating it.
Sheldon blinked. But he hugged Amy.
And just before generally accepted consensus reality reasserted itself, Ray Barone turned to Debra and said, in a bewildered voice
"I'm sure I've seen those two guys somewhere before. I just can't place them."
And a quarter of a million miles away, a tiny American flag made out of paper and popsicle stick stood undisturbed in a mound of moon-dust, an anomaly for future archaeologists to puzzle over...
1) It's an official soundtrack because it's my bloody story and I chose the songs. That's why.
2) Because Russians do not intend to lag behind Afrikaaners and the Indian sub-continent in the art of swearing. Russian has a whole lexicon of inventive curse-words and profanities.
3) "it isn't true unless it makes you laugh." - Illuminatus! Co-creator Robert Anton Wilson.
4) Conina Harebut's Barbarian Hairdressing Salon. Where Conina, a barbarian warrior with a vocation for hair care, provides a bespoke service for women whose daily lives take them to places where one's hair can get a bit frazzled. Women who grapple with peril, death, danger and hand-to-hand combat in fearsome places. Her client group includes Heroines, Assassins, Dark Clerks, Thieves, Watchwomen, tax inspectors, the occasional Seamstress, and Teachers. Susan Sto Helit's hair needs a really good hairdresser. Conina is a really good hairdresser.
5) It was just as well Ponder got distracted before he saw the orangutan. Neil Gaiman has worked with Terry Pratchett. (Good Omens). The Sandman series incorporates quite a few sly Discworld homages. Susan may indeed come from broadly the same place as Gaiman's take on Death.
6) It really exists. In Pasadena. And no, it's not a case of an entrepreneur cashing in on the siucess of TBBT. The Cheesecake Factory was there long before the show. Perhaps Chuck Lorré was doing a favor for an eaterie he liked, who knows? According to a friend who hails from LA, (Pacific Heights), there are queues around the block to get in, even though she doesn't especially rate the food.
7) The demands of narrative causality. Had HEX not made the Machine invisible to air-defense systems over North America, a couple of guided missiles ultimately launched by an automated system inside a mountain might have been part of the picture too.
This episode's soundtrack:
The Eagles: Journey of the Sourcerer. Quite fitting, really, as when we open, Penny and Sheldon are stranded in deep space, having got off a soon-to-be-destroyed Planet Earth (well, 200 years before the Snowball is milliseconds on the galactic scale.) They are accompanied by the only slightly erratic alien intelligence known as HEX, whose guidance systems have been jammed by some unwise poking of buttons by Sheldon Cooper. Can our heroes hitch-hike out of there?
Pink Floyd: Saucer Full of Secrets; Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun; Let There Be More Light; Interstellar Overdrive; Breathe; Dark Side of the Moon.
Blue Öyster Cult (because I'm a fan, that's why!) Heavy Metal; Monsters.
The Rolling Stones: Ten Thousand Light Years From Home. 10,000 light years equate to 3,065 parsecs.
The Steve Miller Band: Jungle Love Indirectly referenced. Anyone familiar with Everybody Loves Raymond will get the reference.
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