Chapter 13: Arrival
T-117 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes and 47 seconds (February 15, 3:14 AM EST).
Afterward, Francine wasn't sure which sound she heard first, the explosion to her left or the thunder to her right.
"The Danaans are early," she said calmly.
She sat upright in bed, replaced her sleep blindfold with her glasses, and turned the nightstand light on. Bright searchlights illuminated the world outside the bedroom window. Instinctively, she flipped the lights back off to avoid attracting attention. What she did notice in that brief moment of light: it was 3:14 am, and the bed next to hers was empty.
Cautiously, she got up and retrieved an ancient Army surplus flashlight from the nightstand and turned it on.
"Norris?"
No response.
She got up. As she was expecting the helicopter any minute now, she had gone to bed mostly dressed, and it was a simple matter to put on the rest of her things.
"Norris, where are you?"
Still nothing.
Searching the room, she finally found her husband unconscious on the other side of the bed. He had rolled off the bed when the attack began and apparently bumped his head when he hit the floor. Francine propped up the flashlight so she could see what she was doing and tried to awaken her husband.
"Now is not a good time for taking a nap, Norris. Norris?"
He returned to consciousness with a labored moan.
Francine put her hand over his mouth. "A little quieter, please. The Danaans are in our back yard. I don't know what's keeping Miss Weir." She helped him to sit up with his back to the bed, but all that came out of his mouth was gibberish.
Francine rolled her eyes, thinking he was playing for attention. "How many fingers am I holding up?" she asked.
The man jerked his head around strangely. "Uhhh...I, I, I can't, I can't, I can't see."
"You're timing is as impeccable as always, Norris," she drawled. "Stay here."
"Nnoooo."
"What?"
"Nnorrris."
"That's you. Norris Nulton."
"Noo." His brow furrowed. "Nnorrrton."
Francine froze. "Norton. Professor Norton Nimnul?"
The man flopped his head up and down.
"You've got to be kidding me. Look, we'll deal with your delusions later. Now stay where you are." She crawled over to the window and cautiously looked out. "They appear to be going east." She crawled over to the nightstand, took down an antiquated telephone, and dialed a number. "Pick up, Laurel, pick up..."
A minute later, she hung up. After another glance out the window, she made up her mind and returned to the man's side. "Okay, it looks like we're on our own," she told him. "I'll try to get you to a hospital if it's safe. If not we can hole up at the estate until they leave." She helped him to stand up, picked up a suitcase with her free hand, and then began walking him towards the door.
"Wherrre?" asked Nimnul.
"To the car, Norris," responded Francine. "I'll drive."
Partway across the living room, a whistling sound was heard rapidly approaching.
"Get down!" cried Francine, pulling Nimnul to the ground. A moment later the building shook from the force of an explosion. She gave "Norris" a rueful look. "It looks like you were right after all-they are in Hartford to kill you." She helped him up to his feet and then, more quickly than before, escorted him out the front door.
Francine and Nimnul exited the house into an abandoned neighborhood, the beige Plymouth the only car in the cul-de-sac. She led him into the passenger seat and then shut the door and retrieved the rest of the luggage to put in the trunk.
While she was gone, Nimnul swung his arms about wildly for a few seconds, then stopped and tried to focus on the hand he was holding before his face.
It took a couple of trips, but eventually Francine got the car loaded. She stopped to look back at the house. She and Norris had spent the last eight years of their lives there, and now she fully expected never to see it in one piece again.
"It was always such...a clean house," she eulogized before climbing into the driver's seat and driving out of the cul-de-sac.
The roads of Hartford were deserted, even more than usual. Smoke rose into the air, probably from burnt-out buildings, but Francine was relieved to note that none of the destruction was directly visible from the road. All lights were out, the clouds above illuminated by roving searchlights.
After nearly a half-hour of eerily-silent driving, she switched on the radio to soothe her nerves, only to be met with static.
"They took out WOLD!" she exclaimed. She adjusted the tuner of the factory original radio until she found a signal.
"...until you reach Long Island," a pre-recorded voice from the radio informed her. "Be sure to bring completed copies of Federal Relocation Forms 15-187 and 347-61, or you will not be admitted into the shelters. This is an emergency broadcast message. All evacuees from the upper New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut areas are instructed to head south to the safety of New York and New Jersey. New York residents shall take highway 87..."
Francine frowned, taking the onramp to Highway 91 North, and continued tuning as they made their way alone, the southbound lane clogged with fleeing motorists.
Nimnul craned his neck around to take in his surroundings.
"It worked," he concluded. "This isn't my original world. What happened here?"
In the distance the alien spaceships could just be made out against the eastern sky, beams of silver light obliterating everything in their path.
"Who's attacking?" he asked.
Francine raised a stringy orange eyebrow at this question. "The Danaans, obviously. Unless that's another alien race attacking us." She tuned the radio some more, until she found a news station that was still manned and operational.
The news was not good. As usual, all efforts to stop the alien advance had utterly failed against the Danaan's superior technology.
"It is suspected that Emperor Freewheel is among the casualties," reported the news announcer.
"Good riddance!" replied Francine.
"You already have an emperor?" Nimnul asked in some alarm.
"We had an emperor, until Freewheel's robots failed to keep the Danaans penned up in Detroit. The man had invented a giant remote-controlled robot and started mass-producing them, but never figured out how to control enough of them at once to stop the Danaans, and the controls were so complicated he wasn't able to teach anybody else how to use them. Don't worry, though, the crown and scepter will not remain unclaimed-as soon as another scientist comes up with a plan to save the world, you can be sure the title will be presented once again."
"All of your emperors are scientists?" Nimnul eagerly asked.
"They have been for the last fifty years. Who better to put in charge of the world than a scientist?" asked Francine.
"Who, indeed," agreed Nimnul. "Now what about that man I saw on the billboard on the way out of town, the one in the mask and cape? I thought I made very sure there were no superheroes in this world before I selected it."
"The Masked Marvel? He was less hero than egotistical blowhard. And you don't have to worry about him-he's retired."
"Super powers or no, I don't want to have to worry about heroes getting in my way."
"Then don't. The Masked Marvel was a product of the late 80's, a very unusual period in recent history. Man was venturing into the Solar System, nuclear power was solving the power crisis, and the Cold War between the U.K. and the U.S.S.R. was winding down. Irrational feelings of optimism were widespread, so when New Haven's local billionaire hired an android named 'Roboman' as his personal bodyguard, everybody looked at their comic books and got inspired to put on tights for justice.
"Hartford's version was the Masked Marvel, a man who seemed at least as interested in his publicity as in fighting crime. Just as with the other cities, the presence of a masked hero inspired other borderline-crazy people to dress up and become masked villains. Their theatrical battles destroyed downtown again and again and drove down the property values. Eventually, people stopped paying attention and the heroes all sort of gave up." Francine glanced over at her passenger. "Are you feeling any better, Norris? I'd rather not fight my way into the hospital unless I absolutely have to."
"My vision has cleared up," replied Nimnul. "I think I'm alright now. But don't call me Norris-it makes me think you're not taking me seriously."
"I never take you seriously, Norris," replied Francine flippantly. "You're the one in love with me, remember?"
"I'm not Norris. I'm Professor Norton Nimnul! Why can't you accept that?"
"Because fantasy and I have never gotten along very well," Francine remarked. Seeing the look on his face, her expression soured. "Right!" she announced, and then rapidly pulled over to the side of the road. "Okay, genius," she warned. "If you're Professor Norton Nimnul, how come you look just like my husband?"
"Your husband," Nimnul informed Francine with hauteur, "has the honor of being my stunningly-handsome counterpart in this universe. The interdimensional portal I invented brought me here, and...there wasn't another me next to me when you found me, was there?"
Francine took a moment to parse this. "No."
Nimnul buried his head in his hands. "Which means it didn't transfer any matter at all." He looked up, a frustrated expression on his face. "If I'd known it would only swap minds, I could have just plugged a Tesla coil into a wall socket and those rodents would be none the wiser!"
"The Rescue Rangers?" Francine asked.
"How do you know about them?" Nimnul asked, grabbing her lapels.
Francine slapped his hands away. She decided to humor his delusion for now. "In this universe, The Rescue Rangers is a cartoon show, and you're the main villain. You can guess who the heroes are."
Nimnul was beside himself with rage. "I can't believe it-they got their own TV show and I didn't?"
"Well in this universe, you're not exactly star material."
"This Norris Nulton...what was he like?" Nimnul asked. "The whole time I was spying on him, he was in an asylum."
"Well, that should tell you everything, shouldn't it?" Francine replied. "Like yourself, his dream was to invent, only his inventions all failed. He came to believe he was cursed before his plans for Moonbase Alpha were accepted."
"This world has a moon base? I've always wanted one of those."
"You wouldn't want it now," replied Francine. "The Danaan's mothership is up there. They were able to invade because Norris' alien detector failed."
"Alien detector? Does alien invasion happen on a regular basis on this Earth?"
"It doesn't on your Earth? We've gotten 50-50 odds with alien invasions this century-two duds, and two genuine Wars of the Worlds." She hooked a thumb in the direction of the distant spaceships. "These guys have so far proven unbeatable."
"Well, they've finally met their match in me," proclaimed Nimnul. "Now, woman, if you could drive me to the scene of the devastation, perhaps I can find what I need to begin my rise to power."
She gave him a warning stare but he refused to flinch. She considered the situation: her Norris had gone so far around the bend that he thought he was Norton Nimnul. Her spineless mess of a husband had become a raving lunatic husband who actually fought back against her insults, and she found herself preferring the replacement to the original. "Alright Professor," she chuckled, "you've convinced me."
"We're going?"
"No, you've convinced me that you're not my Norris. Not even he would say anything that crazy, although come to think of it, those war machines would probably crumble to dust if Norris had ever touched one of them. We should reach Gogol, my mansion, in a couple of hours. If my father (may he roast) knew anything, it was how to build to last. Nothing can touch us once we reach it. What you do after that is your concern, not mine. After all, the Danaans are not exactly leaving anytime soon."
"How are you so sure of that?"
"The goal of every alien invasion has always been the same: the extinction of all animal life on Earth. You can understand why I might want to head away from them under the circumstances."
Nimnul folded his arms and pouted. "If I knew more about this world, I'd ask to be dropped off right now."
Francine ignored him, pulled back onto the freeway, and turned the radio back on.
"This just in," the voice of the radio announced. "The remains of a helicopter have been found in Colt Park, apparently shot down by the Danaans about an hour ago. The female pilot was unconscious and was taken to Hartford Hospital, but the insignia identify it as being in the private ownership of the Orlac family.
"The Orlacs, founders of the world's biggest vacuum cleaner company, are renowned as much for their privacy as their wealth. Owner Dinah Orlac married investor Harold Largess in 1982. They moved to Moonbase Alpha last year to help set up the station's hospital. Older sister Francine Orlac married..."
Francine abruptly turned the radio off. "Laurel," she deduced. She took the next freeway exit, then pulled into an abandoned gas station and pulled out a map. "We've got to go back."
"Go back?" asked Nimnul incredulously. "You won't turn back so I can save this world, but you'll risk your life for a pilot...your employee, I presume?"
"Look!" yelled Francine, getting in Nimnul's face. "You apparently know nothing about me. I hold employee loyalty in high regard. It's a lot more dependable than love, I can tell you that! She stood by me during a pretty rough patch, when I was much less of a people person than I am now. If she was willing to risk her life to save us, it's the least we can do to go to that hospital."
Nimnul said nothing. Francine stared at him for a little longer, then got back to the map and plotted out a route that would not involve any of the clogged southbound freeways. After a few minutes she started the car and headed west, on a route that was mostly away from the still-visible alien ships. Nimnul spent the drive with his neck craned back, studying the ships for obvious weaknesses.
Eventually, the two of them reached Hartford Hospital. As might be expected, it was rather crowded. Francine checked in with the attendant then turned around to bump into a woman who was eagerly checking her reflection in a window, as if she were afraid she'd see someone other than herself. This woman turned out to be the servant from Francine and Norris' pictures. She was wearing a red jumpsuit with an "Orlac's Machines" patch over the breast pocket and her head was bandaged.
"I'm sorry about the helicopter, boss," she said. "I just can't get the hang of flying in clouds. That Danaan ship was completely hidden-I didn't see it until it was too late."
"Think nothing of it, Miss Weir!" Francine replied, relieved. "I'm happy you're in one piece."
"Probably not as much as I am," the pilot replied with a half smile.
Nimnul popped his head into the conversation, bearing a copy of the newspaper under his arm. To Miss Weir he asked, "Could you point out on a photo exactly what part of the spacecraft you hit?"
Miss Weir shrugged. "I think you'd probably be more interested in seeing it for yourself. The ship didn't self-destruct like all the others. It's still in Colt Park, if you'd like to take a look."
"I'll wager your crash knocked out the self-destruct system. You're right, Miss Weir, I do want to take a look."
Francine looked out the window. "Well, I need to take pictures anyway for the insurance adjusters; they'd never believe me otherwise. And the Army's between the park and the Danaans right now, so we should be relatively safe."
"The doctors say I can go, as long as I take it easy for the next week," Miss Weir said. "It'll probably take a few days for you to get a new helicopter for me to fly anyway, boss."
"That's alright," Francine replied. "You can leave the driving to me."
After signing a veritable mountain of paperwork, the three piled back into the Plymouth and made their way over to the city park, where Miss Weir led the way on foot through the gravel paths. Chipmunks peeked at them from the treetops. Nimnul glared at them.
"Don't worry," Francine assured Nimnul. "Our rodents are as dumb as they look , unlike yours."
Francine pulled Miss Weir aside to fill her in on recent developments. Nimnul was sure he saw Francine use the "he's crazy" gesture at one point.
Miss Weir then pulled ahead of the group. "Just a little further, Professor, Mrs. Nulton." Unlike Francine, the pilot appeared to have instantly believed Nimnul's story.
Francine produced a Polaroid 420 camera from her purse and pulled out its "snoot", then looked suspiciously at Nimnul.
"Don't get too close," she warned. "There's no telling what you'd do with technology so recent."
"Recent?" Nimnul asked incredulously. "That camera looks twenty years old to me."
Francine cautiously stretched out her arm and touched Nimnul with the camera. She seemed surprised that it didn't burst into flame.
"Let's just say that Norris and anything invented in his lifetime didn't get along together very well," she explained.
"What kind of inventor could this Norris be if technology blew up when he touched it? No wonder he was a failure!"
"On the contrary," said Miss Weir half to herself. "Perhaps technology reacted to so badly to Norris because he thought he was a failure?"
"That's magical thinking," Francine remarked, smiling. "We're not living in a world of witches and talking animals, after all."
"Thank goodness for that!" exclaimed Nimnul.
Francine turned her head to keep the others from seeing the hurt expression on her face.
Topping a rise, they saw the remains of a spaceship embedded in the next hill. Police tapes attached to plastic orange poles surrounded the craft, and a lone police officer was standing guard.
"Hey there!" the officer yelled at them the moment he spotted them. "This is a restricted area."
"Leave this to me," Francine told the others, instantly self-assured again . She walked up to the officer and began haranguing him, pointing to the mostly-intact helicopter also inside the police line and the camera in her hands. Some money may or may not have changed hands, I'm not at liberty to say. Afterwards, she waved Miss Weir and Nimnul to her side. "You've got ten minutes before his shift ends," she informed them.
Nimnul said, "I want to get as much of a look at the ship as I can. Miss...Weir, was it? I'll probably need your help."
"Let me guess, you'll need a bit of extra muscle?" she quipped.
"Well, I'm not exactly built for heavy lifting," replied Nimnul.
The mad genius took a quick walk around the spaceship then returned to what was obviously a door with a keypad. He quickly started pulling it apart. A minute later, with a spark from the open keypad, the door slid open. "Who needs a lockpick?" he smirked.
"Nice work, Professor!" the pilot exclaimed.
"'Professor'!" he exclaimed over his shoulder. "Now how come you believed me from the first when your boss didn't?"
She tapped the side of her head. "'Cause I was a fan of your TV show even before it aired. In fact, I may be your very first fan. She may have worked on the show, but she didn't like your character because she thought the producer made him up to make fun of her husband. Besides, stranger things have happened-believe me, I know." She then looked up at the spaceship, holding back. "I hope none of those aliens survived the crash," she said.
Francine joined her, holding Polaroids of the helicopter. "The fact that you're looking at a whole spacecraft and not a field of debris is pretty good proof that they must all be dead. I think this is the first Danaan spacecraft ever to fall into human hands."
Francine and her pilot walked into the spaceship to join Nimnul. The inside consisted of a single room, the burnished metal walls otherwise unadorned. A shelf of strange computer equipment circled five feet above the ground; the several flat screens on the wall behind them were all blank, and one was broken and leaking some kind of viscous clear liquid. Two chairs sprouted from the floor to support the dead pilots. Each one was seven feet tall and impossibly spindly, almost all legs and arms attached to a tiny torso. Their two eyes were on stalks above each oval head and their skin (what showed outside their militaristic jumpsuits) was bright red in color, with a texture resembling that of a basketball . The two aliens were slumped over their computers.
"What a smell!" exclaimed Francine. "What is it?"
"You mean besides the smell of burnt alien?" asked Nimnul. He was examining the broken screen and hadn't bothered to turn to face them. "What I detect is electrical. The collision with the helicopter must have triggered a catastrophic short in the wiring, killing everyone inside instantly. It looks to be a freak accident, or perhaps the crew was grossly incompetent-I wouldn't rely on something like this happening on a regular basis. Anything else I should know that doesn't work against these ships?"
"Explosives, flamethrowers, you know, the usual," listed Francine. "I think somebody even tried throwing acid on one once as it was ravaging a city-the results were definitely not pretty."
"So there's something that blocks anything from hitting the ship, like a force field?" speculated Nimnul.
"And I ended up hitting the ship because it either wasn't on, or the system was faulty?" Miss Weir asked.
"Right. I'd guess they didn't have it turned on, given you hit them when they were in the clouds. Why waste power on defenses when you're hidden?"
Francine shrugged. "Force fields. That's science fiction territory. The experts all say there's no such thing." She made a circuit of the small room, craning her neck to get a look at the computer equipment. "I imagine all the scientists will want to figure out how that death beam thing works," she remarked.
"Oh, that's easy," said Nimnul as he pulled himself out of a crawlspace. "It looks pretty standard to me."
"Really?" asked Francine. "You've got light rays that can kill people on your world? That's something else the scientists on this world said was impossible before the first Danaan attack."
"It's just a high-powered laser. In my universe, the technology has been around since the 1960s."
"Laser?" Francine asked.
Miss Weir waved her hand in the air. "Ooo, I think I can get that one! Light Amplification...that was the easy part...by Simultaneous Emission of Radiation?"
"Stimulated, actually," said an impressed Nimnul. "Where did you find her?" he asked Francine.
"The temp agency sent her to me fifteen years ago," she replied proudly. "And despite surviving a head-on auto collision before we even met, she has never missed a day of work!"
"It took you five years to hire me full time!" Miss Weir complained.
"Well to be honest I wanted to see if your memory ever came back."
Nimnul sighed. "Forget I asked. Getting back on topic, it appears that the Danaans don't think you have lasers. I'll build one, and then we'll see how well they stand up to it."
"Could you build one powerful enough to cut one of these ships in half?" asked Miss Weir.
"The power requirements would limit portability, but I could do it."
Francine stroked her chin thoughtfully. "Hmm..." she mused, "maybe I can profit from this madness after all." Raising her voice to address Nimnul, she said, "sounds interesting. What do you need?"
"Let's see, a glass cylinder I could add electrodes to, a semi-silvered mirror, a regular mirror, and a gas to fill the tube. Carbon dioxide or argon would suffice. Oh, and I'd need lenses for focusing the beam."
Francine thought a bit. "Argon might be tricky. I think I know where we can get the rest. Miss Weir?"
"Yes, boss?"
Francine pulled out a pen and a business card for "Orlac's Machines" and wrote something on the back. "Take my car and Professor Nimnul here and get him whatever he needs, then meet me at this address. It's an abandoned industrial laundry-plenty of room to build your prototype." She handed Miss Weir the business card as well as her credit card.
"And what will you be doing?" asked the pilot.
"I'm going to call my contacts, and start filling out the paperwork. If we can make this demonstration impressive enough, we may find ourselves working for the next Emperor of Earth." She rejoined the police officer and after some more quasi-legal deals were made, he let her borrow the radio in his car.