25. For What Shall it Profit a Giant?
She felt chilly. The cold slowly penetrated her, and she became aware that she was lying down on a hard surface. Her brain was fuzzy, filled with strange images. Horrible images. Images of her as a rampaging, destructive monster. Of her as a killer, of her crushing the defenceless body of her friend. Susan moaned and curled up tighter, not wanting to open her eyes and face her new reality.
Eventually she heard a low buzzing, and found herself being lifted up by what felt like a dozen cold hands. Startled, she opened her eyes, and realised she was being supported by something that looked for all the world like a mechanical octopus, but with more arms. She screamed, and started to struggle, snapping one of the arms holding her leg, but another soon took its place.
"Please relax," came a gentle rich baritone. Susan twisted around, and to her horror, she saw a familiar alien being, floating on a familiar hovering device.
"Gallaxhar! No! Not again! Let me go!"
"You are carbon-based lifeform Susan Jane Murphy, known as Ginormica. I am silicon-based lifeform Xalthazar, of the Panthalassa Security Force. Greetings. You are perfectly safe."
"Safe?" Susan screeched, yanking another arm off her as she struggled to get to her feet. To her horror, she realised that the robot arms were neatly slicing up the tattered remains of her dress and panties, leaving her completely naked. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" Susan gasped.
"I do apologise," the alien said smoothly. "Normally you would be unconscious for this stage of the process. We miscalculated."
"You're goddam right you miscalculated," Susan yelled, suddenly twisting sideways and wrenching herself free. She rolled on the ground and was up in a flash, grabbing the small blue-grey alien.
"You really shouldn't do that," the alien said as Susan felt a sharp pain in her back. "We mean you no harm, but we will defend ourselves if you attempt to harm us." There was another, more agonizing bolt of pain, and Susan dropped to her knees, reluctantly opening her fist to let the alien go.
"Thank you," the alien said.
Looking around as she stood up, Susan noticed the alien was not alone. There were several others, on hoverbikes and carrying weapons. She glared at the creature, holding her arms protectively across her naked body in an automatic gesture. "Gallaxhar tried and failed to conquer this planet. I assure you, you won't succeed either."
"Please understand me, Susan Jane Murphy. We have no desire to conquer your planet. I am glad that you prevented the renegade Gallaxhar from doing so."
"Good, because if you did—wait, did you say 'renegade'?"
"Gallaxhar is the most dangerous criminal our civilisation knows. We are charged with the task of tracking him down and bringing him to justice. He destroyed an entire solar system, killing billions, to obtain a sample of the forbidden material."
"You mean quantonium? If you've come for my quantonium, you can have it," she said in a dull voice.
The alien's outer eyes rotated twice, then blinked. "You would… give it up? Just like that?"
Susan nodded. "I've become a monster, evil; a threat to my friends. I can't handle the power, the responsibility. I've failed. I thought I could handle it. I thought I was strong. I wasn't. I was weak. Pathetic. I don't like the monster I've become." She sighed, and wiped her eye. "I would prefer to live a small, limited life as the person I used to be than one as the arrogant hero with no friends I have become."
"I am glad you are cooperative," the alien said. "This is a very important mission we are on. Gallaxhar is an insane astrophysicist who was determined to get his tentacles on quantonium, and let nothing hinder him in his quest to dominate the galaxy. He destroyed our home planet, killing nearly ten billion, in the experiment that fused our two universes for a femtosecond and brought a chunk of quantonium into existence. That chunk was flung out at superluminal speeds before slowing enough to be caught in the gravitational well of your sun, and impacted on your planet."
"On me," Susan told him. "It hit me."
"Much of it did, yes," Xalthazar explained. "The asteroid broke up in your atmosphere, however, with the rest impacting in a wide area over the other side of the planet. We sent a robot probe to recover that quantonium, in an area locally known as Roma."
"That's what that robot digger was doing?" Susan gasped. "Well I'll be! Bob was right! It was looking for its car keys—I mean, something alien that got dropped there…."
"Yes. It is vital that we recover it all," Xalthazar explained. "Quantonium is the most powerful substance in the universe. This is why we must destroy all the quantonium Gallaxhar brought into this universe."
"Destroy it? How?"
"It will be sent into a supermassive black hole. Once past the event horizon, no one can recover it. It will fall into the singularity, and be destroyed. Our physicists theorize it will actually be returned to its original universe."
"Gone, for ever?"
"It must be this way. The power of even a single atom of quantonium can be drawn on indefinitely, and if enough remains unaccounted for, it will be able to destroy worlds in the wrong hands. Which is why the Security Force fleet is here. We must secure all the quantonium on your planet."
"There are few who can master it," another alien told her, swooping down towards her on its hoverbike. "Nor can your military forces be trusted with it. It provides tremendous power, but power without control is chaos, and chaos is dangerous."
"Yes, it is…" Susan remembered what Mary had told her, and felt the tears start as Mary's loss overwhelmed her again. She sank to the floor, burying her face in her hands and sobbing.
"Exactly," Xalthazar added, taking no notice of Susan's tears. "As I told you, we must recover all the quantonium that has entered our universe. So if you would permit the robot to finish preparing you, we may begin the extraction process. The quantum entanglement skin will assist that process."
"Quantum…entanglement…?"
"It acts to focus the quantum interaction between the two universes, like energy conduits. I expect Gallaxhar would have used a similar one."
"That's what Doc said," Susan started to say, then suddenly she remembered what she had done to him. A sharp pang of guilt and worry shot through her. "Doc, Doc…" she whispered.
"Therefore you will need to submit to being covered in the quantum entanglement skin," the alien said. "We must have you alive and conscious to extract it, but you do not have to be comfortable. Therefore, if you do resist, we shall make you uncomfortable until you no longer resist."
"Do what you have to do," Susan told them dully, kneeling naked on the floor. "Just get rid of this stuff inside me."
The robot arms once again lifted Susan up. She was then surrounded by a series of vertical pillars, which produced a pale yellow light, then began rotating around her. They stopped, and then narrowly focused beams of gold light shone on her wounds.
"Skin and flesh trauma healed. Detecting and removing foreign metallic substances within the flesh," the computer's voice noted in a deep bass voice. "Purification of epidermis commencing."
In a few moments all her injuries were healed, even her gunshot wounds, and her skin and hair were clean again.
Other arms descended from the ceiling, and proceeded to apply strips of some silver metal to her body, while yet others rapidly stretched a skin-tight dark blue metallic fabric between them. In a few minutes, Susan found she was wearing a suit identical to the one Gallaxhar had put her in.
"Bring in the mobile containment device," Xalthazar ordered.
"You don't need to imprison me," Susan said dully. "I won't resist."
"You say so, but we dare not take the chance you are trying to deceive us into trusting you. I am afraid we cannot risk quantonium falling into the wrong hands. No one would ever give it up willingly."
Susan looked at her hands. The same hands that had wrought such destruction. The same hands that had cradled her dying friend. "I wouldn't have, once," Susan admitted softly. "But now… now I know that these are the wrong hands."
"You are wise indeed to have such self-awareness. Nevertheless, we cannot risk any problems."
Susan sighed, and nodded. "Very well. I submit. Do what you need to do."
There was a quick buzz and a blur, and Susan found herself surrounded by the same pinkish-red glowing force field beams Gallaxhar had trapped her in. She gently prodded one, remembering that terrible night she thought the world was doomed. It buzzed, sending a mild electric shock through her.
"I wouldn't do that," Xalthazar told her. "That force field is impenetrable."
Susan laughed softly. "No it's not. I could break out of this. I broke through Gallaxhar's one."
The alien looked at her, all four eyes wide. "It would take an immense amount of strength to overcome an electromagnetic force field. If you possess such power, there is very little that could stop you."
"I'm good with pickle jars too," Susan joked. For some reason her heart was lighter than it had been for ages. Once she was back to normal, perhaps her life would start getting back to normal, and under control. She knew she faced prison for her actions, but anything would be better than remaining a monster. Perhaps becoming small again was the only way she could return to being the caring, sweet person she had always thought of herself as. At any rate, she could not risk hurting anyone else.
"We're here," Xalthazar told her after a few moments. "Step inside the extraction chamber, please."
Susan found herself surrounded by three glass-like petals which were closing on her. She allowed them to seal themselves around her, and braced herself for the pain of removal. Her vision was filled with a bright green mist, glowing brightly, swirling in intricate patterns. She felt a tingling, and a sudden coldness, and then the mist was gone and the glass cage was gone and she was just plain old Susan Murphy again.
"Thank you for your cooperation," the alien said.
"I was expecting it to hurt more," Susan admitted. "It hurt when Gallaxhar took it."
"That was because you resisted. Because you believed you should keep it. Now you do not: you have let your power go of your own free will."
"I was never worthy to be Ginormica, I know that now," Susan said sadly, feeling nervous and alone. She felt dizzy, light yet strangely heavy.
"Perhaps not. But you are worthy of being you," the alien said in a gentle voice.
Susan looked up at its bulbous head, its four eyes, and smiled sadly. "I'm glad you got it out. Now maybe I can get back to a normal life, where I am no longer a monster."
"On behalf of the Government in Exile of Panthalassa, we thank you, Susan Jane Murphy. Once we have secured all the quantonium, we shall then deal with the renegade Gallaxhar."
"What… what will you do with me now?"
"We will return you to your home, which your records place in a settlement near the western coast of this landmass called Mod Esto," Xalthazar said. "Follow the guard."
Weeping softly, Susan did so. She was not even sure now that she would not be killed, but she no longer cared. She knew that the moment she returned to Modesto the police would find her and take her away anyway, to stand trial for murder. She would rot in prison for years. But at least this way she could eventually return to a normal life. A small and limited life, because she was too small and limited to handle anything else.
"Wait here," the guard told her after a long walk, leaving her standing on a large round disc with strange markings on it. In a few seconds, Susan was enveloped by a bright glow, forcing her to shut her eyes. She could feel herself floating, being lowered gently down. The light faded, and Susan found herself standing outside her parents' new home on the outskirts of Modesto on a sunny morning in late summer. Everything looked so normal it was scary. For the first time in ages, she found herself looking up, not down, at houses, power poles, and trees. It would be easy to believe that none of the past couple of months had happened. Except for the painfully stark memories that constantly haunted her mind.
She looked up higher, and saw a huge spaceship, with the same bulbous three-armed design as Gallaxhar's, hovering above her. The glowing hatch underneath one of the arms closed, and the ship slowly moved off, drifting unhurriedly through the air in utter silence. In a few minutes it had gathered speed and was gone from sight.
Susan sighed, and walked over to her parents' house. There was no one home of course, as they were not scheduled to return for another fortnight. She wandered around to the back yard, and looked up at the huge barn that had been built for her. It was immense, and she shuddered to think that she used to be that size. No wonder people were scared of her. She'd be scared of her too, she decided. Especially if she were just a small girl, like Amy. That's one brave kid, Susan thought to herself. I don't think I could have been that brave, to come and see me, to go on TV and defend me—I guess she won't be doing that again. Nobody will…. Susan sighed, and then groaned as pain shot through her stomach, reminding her she hadn't eaten in days. Her parents would have food, she knew. And cold, clean, pure water.
Dizzy with anticipation and hunger, she fished out the spare back door key from the peg basket by the clothes line, where her parents always kept it. Once inside, she made a beeline for the kitchen. After taking a long drink straight from the tap, she raided the pantry. Susan could not remember the last time a meal had tasted so good. Not only had it been days since she last ate, it was the first time in months that she was able to experience normal textures. She ate and ate until she could not manage another bite.
"Sorry for eating all your food, Mom, Dad," she said out aloud, feeling very stuffed. "But I really needed that. It was sooo good." She paused, and touched her throat. "Hello? Susan? My name is Susan. Gosh, it sounds weird to have a high voice again. Well, Susan, you'd better get used to it. You're back to normal. Completely… normal," she sighed, looking at her fingers. Her small, delicate fingers. "It's better this way," she told herself. "Better for everyone."
She quickly washed up, and then went to the kitchen phone. She stood before it for a few minutes, breathing deeply, trying to summon up the courage for what she had to do next. Then she lifted the receiver, and dialled a familiar number.
"Uh, hello, Uncle Rick? This is, uh, Susan. That's right, Susan. Yes, I'm fine, thanks. Though I'm back to my normal size. Yeah, not a giant any more…. Yes, it was those aliens. Anyway, I'm really, really sorry about… well, about everything. I'm at my parents' place, and I'll be…. I'll be waiting for you here. I won't resist. Please… please don't take too long. I'm scared…."
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Susan took the barn key from by the back door, and headed out to the huge structure that had once been her new bedroom. She unlocked the smaller, normal-sized door set in the large door, and stepped into the vast chamber. Suddenly she felt very small indeed as she looked around from her new perspective. There were the guest rooms, the wide platforms for normal people to interact with her twenty-five feet up, and even higher were the surrounding walkways. She had once talked eye-to-eye with her father way up there, when she had been standing down here on the floor. It was hard to conceive just how immense Ginormica had been.
Susan climbed up to the topmost walkways, and looked down. The view was both familiar, and strangely alien. Before all this had happened, she would have felt dizzy looking down from this height. Now it felt normal, and the feeling of normality was itself strange. Susan wasn't sure which felt more unreal: her memories of being nearly fifty feet tall, or being only five and a half feet. It would take a while to get used to life at this level again.
She headed down to the main mid-level platform, where Vanessa and Mindy had danced that night, while she had been relegated to the main floor, unable to properly interact with them. Moving over to the stereo, she set it to play Susie Q on infinite loop, and then started dancing slowly by herself, tears in her eyes as she thought of what her parents and friends would think of her now. Her father had been so proud, that time in Washington when she had danced with him after being awarded the Medal of Freedom. Now she had betrayed that faith in her; betrayed it completely and utterly. Thoughts of her father reminded her of how he would tuck her in at night as a child after reading a fairy story—Susan had loved hearing about princesses in towers, rescued by handsome princes, and battles with fearsome monsters.
"You remember when you called me your little princess, Daddy?" she whispered, hugging her arms around her body. "And now it seems I'm the fearsome monster instead…."
"Oh Susie Q, baby I love you, Susie Q…" came the song.
"Oh Daddy too, I love you…" Susan whispered, stopping dancing and burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
Wiping away her tears, Susan wandered around into her bedroom as the song started playing again. Her bed looked huge, bringing home the true size of Ginormica even more immediately. She made her way down to it and walked awkwardly across the immense blanket, then bent down to pick up her old Puss-in-Boots doll. Then she settled down to wait. It wouldn't be long, she knew. She was ready for them. Ready to accept her fate. Fresh tears flowed down her face as she curled into a ball and hugged her childhood comforter, wishing beyond wishing that everything that had happened was just another nightmare and that she really was only eight years old again.
"General, we have her!"
Monger looked up from the giant display table in the Situation Room buried deep underground in Area 52, where half a dozen senior Pentagon officials and generals, including the United States President, were busily conferring, with more present on screens around the room. "What? Who?" he snarled.
"Ginormica, sir!"
"Where?"
"Modesto, General!"
"What's she doing there?" Monger asked. His eyes narrowed. "Are there any casualties?"
"Negative, General. She showed up at her parents' home. And she's… well, apparently not ginormous any longer."
"How?"
"Couldn't say, sir."
"Probably connected with the alien ship that hovered over Modesto briefly," an official noted.
"Which one was that?" Monger barked.
"This one," the official said, pointing to a blinking symbol on the display table, which was showing a map of the overall south-western part of United States. A dozen blinking symbols were slowly moving over the map, congregating over central Nevada.
"First Ginormica goes on a rampage, and now we have a fleet of alien ships overhead," Monger snarled. "Monsters and aliens, all causing problems at the same time." He sighed, and ran his hand through his crew cut. "Right, first things first. Send word to the Modesto PD: Ginormica is to be taken in, and held until my arrival. She is to be treated well. She is our prisoner, not theirs."
"What's going to happen to her, General?" President Obama asked.
"Court martial, Mr President," Monger stated. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it has to be."
Obama pursed his lips. "Very well. This is a big enough disaster as it is. Half the Las Vegas Strip damaged, dozens of casualties, a dangerous monster on the loose, and to top it all off, an invasion by an entire fleet of alien spacecraft! The Republicans are out for blood, and Wolf News keeps replaying the medal ceremony and accusing me of being soft on monsters. Asking why I freed them in the first place."
"That was… after the San Francisco Attack, when they saved…" Monger started to explain.
"I know that!" Obama shot, cutting him off. "You know that! The GOP knows that! Damned Wolf News knows that! But do you think they're going to let that stop them from using this to attack me?" He took a deep breath. "I have a press conference in half an hour. General Monger, I want to at least be able to tell the American people that we have captured the Monster of Las Vegas. If not, I will be forced to reconsider your rank and posting. Do I make myself clear?"
"Sir!" Monger snapped a salute, and hurried out of the room. He strode along a few corridors and threw open a door to a reception room where Link and Bob were waiting.
"Donner and Blitzen! Vampirella dead, Ginormica on the loose, Cockroach in intensive care! Monster rampages! Alien invasions! I am sick to death of all monsters and aliens!"
"What… what should we do?" Link asked quietly. "Get after Susan—I mean, Ginormica?"
Monger shook his head. "I'll do that myself. I'm taking a chopper to Modesto immediately to get her. Then she'll be transferred back to Area 52, and held here until her court-martial."
"What's going to happen to her?" Link asked nervously.
"The question is, what's going to happen to us? To Monster Force?" Monger snapped. "The President is livid! We are skating on very thin ice here!"
"Ooh, I love ice skating!" Bob called. "Are we going to fight more aliens? This is going to be fun!"
"Silence!" Monger snapped. "The President has not mobilized us. He has been contacted by the leader of the alien fleet, who says they are here in peace. I don't trust those slimy alien scum myself, but it's not our place to act! We follow orders, dammit! And the next monster who disobeys an order I will personally skin alive and feed to my pet goat! If I had a pet goat, that is. God damn you Ginormica, you are in so much trouble!"
Susan heard sirens in the distance, rapidly getting closer, and shivered in terror. What would happen to her? Nothing good, of course. She deserved everything that was going to happen to her, but it was still going to be very hard. She remained on the huge bed, clutching her doll, her heart pounding, until she heard the familiar voice of her uncle.
Crawling to the edge of the bed, she saw him and half a dozen other policemen standing, waiting for her. Susan nodded, and slowly headed for the stairs to climb down, still carrying Pussy-Boots.
"Susan. I… I'm sorry it had to come to this. If you could, ah, come with us," Uncle Rick said, gesturing. "General Monger has asked that we… that we hold you until he arrives."
His words were calm, but Susan could tell it was costing him a great deal to have to arrest his niece. "I'm so sorry," she whispered as she passed him. "I'm so sorry. It's over now. Everything's over."
She was led out to a police car, tears streaming down her face as the press cameras flashed and questions were shouted out. But Susan didn't hear any of them. In her mind, the flashing cameras and police lights were the neon lights of the Strip, and their calls were the cries of the people she had terrorized on her rampage of destruction. Hugging her stuffed toy, she stared out the window as the car slowly drove to the police station downtown, and meekly entered her cell when they arrived. Susan sat on the hard bed, her knees under her chin, and looked around at the blank concrete walls, blinking back her tears. This was her life now. This was what her pride and arrogance had brought her to. And she completely deserved it. Because she had been unable to forgive. Unable to understand what made a monster, and what made a person. It had taken becoming everything she hated to understand why she had lost everything she loved.
.
MANGLER'S NOTES: I have decided that Gallaxhar's destruction of his home planet didn't exactly endear him to the remaining populace of his species. Anyway, some end notes for those who are curious...
The title is, of course, taken from the Bible, KJV: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36). The meaning for Susan and being a giant should be nicely obvious.
While there are sound reasons why silicon-based life would be tricky, it's an SF trope, so I've used it, since Gallaxhar was on about "carbon-based" so much.
"Panthalassa" was the vast global ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea, during the late Paleozoic and the early Mesozoic years. No real reason for choosing the name - I just like it. I usually prefer real, though obscure, words to making up my own, as they are usually more linguistically sound. Unlike something like "Xalthazar" for example... (Which is based slightly on "Mathazar" from "Galaxy Quest".)
Here we get to see the process by which Gallaxhar dressed Susan originally. Still not sure how the army did it, mind...
And we find out what that Rome robot (Romebot?) was doing. It wasn't just a MacGuffin to get Our Heroes to Europe...
In case anyone doesn't know, "Donner" and "Blitzen" are German for "Thunder" and "Lightning," and are not meant here as a direct reference to sleigh reindeers.
Three more chapters plus epilogue to go at this stage. I want to get all three complete before I start posting them, as they're intimately linked, especially the first two.
[posted 7 May 2013]
[edited slightly, 22 July 2013. Did I say "three" more chapters? Ha ha...]