Chapter Three
Evening light shone on the faded paintwork and crumbling stone of Acme Looniversity. None of it found its way down to the deep tunnels where Ricardo Rat, Bruce Avery and Ann Royd were hesitantly making their way down flights of long-unused stairs from the stealth broom closet up on the second floor.
"That's two flights down, and no signs of any other doors in here," Ricardo found himself whispering, despite the signs pointing to no-one having been this way in years. "So maybe there IS no way in from the ground floor. Or the first."
"Good plan, keep secret better," Bruce nodded, as he carefully surveyed each step before trusting his weight to it. "Maybe go straight to Squeakeasy in basement."
"I never heard of a cheese prohibition," Ricardo said, his naked rat tail swishing in frustration. "And I should have; we've got lots of family stories going back years. Rats eat cheese too."
"Nothing in databanks," Ann replied promptly. "And yet - there is something down here."
Ricardo's chisel-teeth suddenly grinned in the dim light of the torches probing ahead. "I think we just found it." At the bottom of the staircase was another heavy iron door, this one with obvious opening latches like the watertight bulkhead on a ship or submarine. "I don't see any locks on this one."
Bruce pressed an ear up against the door for a minute, listening intently. Then he knocked boldly on the door three times, the corridor ringing with the hollow-sounding boom.
Ricardo's tail went rigid in alarm. "What did you do THAT for?" He hissed, looking left and right as if expecting suddenly awakened guardians to be coming at them.
"Not hear moving water," Bruce replied promptly. "But maybe still flooded. Till get echo back, not know."
"Logical," Ann said flatly. "Observe the door design. It is waterproof and pressure-tight. Opens towards us. The tunnel might have filled with high-pressure water. Open it without checking there is air on both sides and..."
Ricardo's ears went right down. "I get the picture. Our trip would be a washout." He lent a paw as Bruce strained against the first locking lever; it moved with difficulty, but it moved - as did the one at the bottom corner.
The three Toons stood for a second looking at each other. Suddenly Ricardo grinned. "What's the worst that could be in there? A tunnel full of decades-old bootleg cheese? We Rats can take any amount of stink, it's an Evolution thing. Ann, you keep saying you wish you HAD a sense of smell, and Bruce..."
"Yaa! Extreme vintage cheese tasty! Food fights back!" Bruce rubbed his stomach in anticipation. "1933, famous good year."
Ricardo winced. His sister's roommate at Digitalis U had done a foundation year at the MiskaToonic U in Arkham on the East Coast - and they had field trips to meet and interview 'Crawling, seething liquescent horror.' He wondered just what a tonne of bootleg cheese left alone in the dark could have... evolved into, in all that time. And if something originally meant to be eaten had evolved to be vengeful about it.
They all braced themselves against the door frame and heaved; with a loud creak of rusty hinges the door swung open. Ricardo took a cautious sniff - but there was no overpowering stink; just the stale smell of long-confined air.
Stepping into the level tunnel beyond, they flashed their torches left and right; the tunnel stretched off in both directions into the darkness. On the floor could be made out some square box-like shapes, that they cautiously moved over to investigate.
"Archival storage?" Ann queried, opening a box and looking inside. She pulled out some round, flat cannisters. "Pre-digital film reels!"
"Teaching notes in this one. Reference materials." Ricardo's eyes gleamed. He opened up one that seemed to have been written by a Professor F. Leghorn, and gave a whistle of surprise. "We hit the jackpot! That old phrase my family use - 'wait just a cotton-pickin' minute' - I never knew how just many seconds were in one of those; it's not sixty. Or how much cotton. It's all in here."
"Calibrated to four decimal places," Ann's eyes gleamed oddly in the darkness. "The best that 1930's technology could measure."
Bruce had opened another box, and brought out some strangely shaped items. "Comic props. Mom have old printed ACME catalogue. Seen some of this in it. Can't buy now."
They looked at each other, all thinking hard.
"There's crates full of the same, looks like," Ricardo said, shining his torch around.
"Too much stuff to take out," Bruce summed up what they were all thinking. "Work on it here. This safest place study it. Needs better light, and make comfy somehow. Nobody come here in years."
"I don't see any signs of it being a cheese bar," Ricardo commented. "You'd expect tables and chairs for customers, maybe shelves for the cheeses."
Just at that moment, there was a distant rumble along the tunnel to the left, and a dim light appeared - showing the tunnel was slightly curved.
"Get down. Kill lights," Bruce hissed, and they all dropped flat behind the boxes.
Ricardo's whiskers began to stir as they lay still in the pitch darkness, hardly daring to breathe. His model-sheet had many schticks based on non-Toon rodents, and for the first time since entering the tunnel, there was a subtle air current. And in a few seconds his nose spotted a fresh scent of vegetation, mixed with that of fresh earth. Someone had opened a passage to the outside.
In a few minutes, a beam of torchlight shone on the roof above them - and then came a deep chuckle. Ricardo froze for a second, about to launch into cornered-rat 'fight or flight' mode - till he realised the voice seemed familiar.
"Great minds think alike," George Clumper-Duff shone his torch on the three Juniors as they lay on the tunnel floor. "And great Adventurers get their paws dirty. We dug our way in from the nearest patch of woods, a good place to hide the tunnel. Looks like you found a better way."
"How did you know we were here?" Ricardo stood up, brushing dust off his fur.
"Rabbit ears," Myrela answered, coming up from behind her brother. "I can hear you and Bruce breathing - and your heartbeats. Ann's sounds too; they're really quite distinctive," she added cryptically as she surveyed the three Toons and the tunnel around them.
"You have opened an insecure entrance," Ann said flatly. "The secret is compromised."
"Not so much," Myrela's left rabbit ear dipped. "Marcus is standing guard over our tunnel outside. Any intruders while we're down here, he'll kick them into high polar orbit, claim it's a 'herd stallion territorial thing'. And not far off in the wood is an abandoned groundskeepers hut. We plan to move it over to cover the hole. Nobody comes this way now."
"Yaa!" Bruce grinned. "Can get fresh air. Leave door we found open, make airflow. Get cable for lighting in from Looniversity end."
"I can tap the main power systems untraceably, given cable," Ann said. "For lighting, and running film projectors. There are two here; their circuits feel sound." She ran her fingers over the motor of a dust-caked projector.
"Sounds like a plan." Ricardo nodded, relieved. "Now we've got to decide who to let in on it. There's so much stuff! Talk about comedy - it's all here. Enough to make the Principal keel over in shock."
Bruce grinned a shark-like grin, his eyes and teeth gleaming as he held up a typescript manual whose faded cover proclaimed 'Villain Whopping 101 by B. Bunny, 1955 class notes.' "Can do that. Good thing for her we the good guys!"
As Ricardo, the Clumper-Duff siblings and the rest began to sort through the treasure trove in the old steam tunnel, four storeys above them another pair of rabbits explored the bits of the Looniversity that had never appeared in the student guides.
"You know, Buster," Babs said conversationally, as she spin-changed into Alpine mode complete with lederhosen "This getup always makes me want to... yodel." She waved an ice-axe like a conductor's baton.
"Know what you mean, Babsy," Buster nodded, appreciating the sight of his wife's white cottontail in the tight leather shorts. "But - this IS a stealth mission."
"Meh." Babs wrinkled her nose. "So - who's around to hear us up here, this time of day? Looks like Pete Puma isn't janitor any more." She looked at the un-swept third-floor corridor. "Looks like nobody is."
"Check on that," Buster agreed. He pulled out a floor plan and looked up at a ladder set in the wall. It led up to a ceiling hatch that was closed with a large padlock. "This could be tricky. I never heard of anyone going up into the bell tower."
"First time for everything! To boldly go where none have split an infinitive before! Just don't wear a red shirt, is all." Babs swarmed up the ladder, clipping her climbing belt securely onto the top rung to leave her hands free as she studied the hatch close up. "Hmm. The lock's a solid kilogram chunk of classic German engineering, not a cheapo ACME job. Looks like Professor Knott-Bormann was here, all right."
"So... what can our plucky hare-oine do to advance the plot?" Buster's eyebrows wriggled as he fed his pink-and-white doe the line. "What fiendish ingenuity will it take?"
Clipped securely onto the ladder, Babs performed the tricky 'spin-change-without-the-spin' in-place change that had won her the Summa com Looney honours degree from a rather more populous Acme Looniversity - and re-shaped her ears and head-fur into a strict Germanic plaited bun straight out of a classic 1930's Alpine epic (probably involving Edelweiss as well as gratuitous yodelling). She felt in her hairdo and pulled out a hairgrip, that she held up in triumph. "Ta-dahh! If you can't get a precision cut key... try a precision-cut hairclip!"
"Not a Bobby-pin - a Brunhilde Pin, another quality product of Vienna's Niebelunge-werke. Every home should have one," Buster cheered her on as she exerted her Will on the lock, and within a minute Babs whooped in Triumph. The hatch yielded to a push, and the intrepid Alpiniste cautiously poked her head up into the long-sealed bell chamber.
Looking up, Buster enjoyed the view of his winsome wife standing on the ladder half-way through the hatchway, evidently taking stock of whatever was in there. Rather than climbing into the bell chamber, two minutes later she reached into the room, grabbed and carefully put a large book in her Hammerspace pocket, softly closing the hatch behind her and climbing down. Her eyes were wide.
"And?" Buster asked, an eyebrow raised as Babs spin-changed back to normal, now minus the Adventuring outfit. Evidently she had had enough shocking discoveries for one evening.
"Buster - we were right about what's up there. Almost TOO right." Babs hesitated, parting her pocket. "The good news is, it's definitely Calamity's territory. The bad news is - he's NOT going to like it."
Ten minutes later and clad again in their Adventuring outfits, they cautiously approached the basement, checking for any stray students who might be down there probing for Squeakeasies.
"Wouldn't do for them to spot the long-lost Babs and Buster Bunny somehow in the picture," Buster nodded. "That'd give the game away. Should have brought those Secret Identity domino masks along with us."
"And make sure they don't come off at the wrong moment - we can apply The Spirit (C) glue!" Babs quipped. "Even if it is rough to get off fur."
"That's the spirit, all right," Buster nodded. "Elmyra's kids worked it out anyway – they'd likely see through the masks too - but I think they'll keep quiet about us."
By his side, Babs grinned. "They really ARE the sharpest carrot-knives in the drawer. Which is reassuringly funny. Like Professor Bugs taught us - looked at the right way, you can see comedy in anything."
"These days you've got to look pretty hard," Buster raised an eyebrow. "Those two Neo-Puritans in your class - about as funny as a train wreck. With a holiday excursion train full of nuns taking blind orphaned puppies to the seaside - and a Dip tanker."
Babs wiggled her eyebrows. "Why, Buster Bunny. We'll nave 'nun' of that pessimism. Plenty of comic resources there, if you dig far enough. Don't forget, those are the dear daughters of the notorious Margot Mallard and her very loving maids. Any more... messy details about THAT, and bang goes our R-rating."
"Hers went years ago," Buster pointed out.
"Heh. And the kids of THAT 'close encounter of the X-rated kind' - turned out Puritans! I'll bet Margot thinks it's hilarious." Babs' whiskers quivered in glee.
"As the Juniors likely say to the porcupine kid - you have a point," Buster conceded.
They returned to the basement apartment without incident, hugged a sleepy Blitz Bunny and handed over the fruits of their exploration.
Calamity looked at the old papers Babs handed to him and read through them. A minute later he slammed them down on the table and turned towards the bunnies, his face horror-stricken.
"What's wrong, Cal?" Buster asked his old friend. "Can't translate it?"
"Or work out what it all means?" Babs waggled her eyebrows.
Calamity gave a fascinating special-effects display, showing that even an already grey-furred Toon could turn grey. He held up his sign in a trembling paw. The trouble is... I CAN.
"Yay!" Babs enthused. "Do we have our time machine? A return ticket to before the plot went off the rails?"
Um. Maybe. This... thing, you found... I have an idea of what it does - and HOW it does it. And WHO built it. The Coyote's ears dropped like wet dishrags.
"I can hear a large 'but' coming along here, Babsette," Buster warned her. "So, Cal, where's the snag?"
Calamity pointed at the old manual on the desk as if it was a nest of venomous insects. This thing breaks SO many laws of physics! UNHEIMLICH - as its inventors could have said. Should have. But didn't. That was the problem.
"Eh, so what's a little perpetual-motion machine or whatever, between friends?" Babs shrugged. "I won't tell if you won't. It's just a McGuffin, plot device thing. You can pull the big lever or hit the red button off-camera if you like, so long as it works. You can get away with anything 'off-camera'."
It's not like some petty traffic violation, running a red light on the corner when nobody's looking, Babs, Calamity signed patiently. When these laws break... they stay broken.
"Hey! I broke the sound barrier in the 10,000 metres sprint, that last time we challenged Perfecto to the doe-decathlon," Babs objected. "And it was still all there, next time I checked."
Not the same kind of thing, Calamity signed.
"Where's the Committee for 'What Mankind Was Not Meant To Know' when you need them?" Buster asked wryly. "Works for Toons too, I heard. Didn't you say Prof Wile-E was a member?"
He was. And he was training me to take his place someday. The Committee broke up, after the Dumb Bomb hit. They used to stop this sort of thing being possible! Wholly monstrous physics! Calamity looked down at the papers on the desk and flinched away. This thing uses… aether. We don't DO that stuff anymore.
"Chloroform's a better anaesthetic, I always heard," Babs opined, briefly spin-changing to Nurse Babs. "Or for Toons – the Big Mallet prescription."
Calamity's teeth bared in a humourless grin. Not that sort of ether. There's physics it's not safe to even think about - lest 'the world sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister... by the lights of a perverted and misapplied science'. The Committee had this tech down as 'Do Not Touch – duration indefinite' - we only just managed to hush it up the first time.
"Like things haven't pretty much reached bottom already?" Babs asked wryly. "How worse can it get?"
Mess around with this stuff and we could find out. The coyote shivered. I could lose my Dramatic License for this.
Buster looked on, sympathetically. "I think it's like... a Perfecto grad, and ACME Acres' trailer park," he whispered to Babs. "They may know about it - gives them something to sneer at. But they do NOT want to go there."
"Can't make a lettuce salad without breaking a few lettuces," Babs shrugged. Rabbits had of course heard the usual phrase involving omelettes but found salads more to their tastes. "Unless of course you've got another time machine lying around." She looked about hopefully.
I wish. Calamity looked bleak. He poked the thick manual with a special high-tech (Stick of Poking, (+3)) and winced.
"I'm sure you can get it working somehow, Cal," Buster nodded encouragingly.
The coyote sighed, as he pulled a long set of tongs from his Hammerspace tool pouch and picked up the ancient manual as if it was a beaker of unshielded Dip, before gingerly carrying it out of the room. That's what I'm afraid of.
One of the new features Professor Bugs had managed to install in the old shelter was a large modern hot-tub, which Babs and Buster were delighted to discover worked perfectly.
"Ahh… This is more like it," Babs sighed, slipping into the deep, steaming water that evening. "You know… considering Buffy Vanderbunny is such a high-class character – it feels good to wash her out of my fur for a while."
"Ditto, dear doe," Buster nodded, joining her. "And I feel too – stiff, as Biff. Time to unbend." He cradled Blitz gently in his arms and slowly eased his son into the warm waters.
Babs giggled, looking at her hare heir. "Here we are, all in the tub together, like a Japanese family. A cultural tradition we picked up in our long stay over there."
Buster raised an eyebrow. "It was barely a week. Hardly had time for more than a couple of the traditional Gratuitous Shower Scenes."
Babs waved dismissively. "So, a lot happened. Busy week. Made a big impression." She paused. "Still – we didn't pick up ALL the memes. Like – I don't think you saw Merumo's neighbours, they're officially listed as rabbits. In theory. But they're Sea Hares." There had been plenty of local memes Babs had looked at without being tempted – Japan was also famous for its celebrity Mega-fauna, and Merumo had a subscription to the monthly all-colour publication 'Kaiju and the girls who love them.' Evidently over there, species incompatibility was just something other people worried about.
Buster shrugged. "Sea Hares? Japan's all islands, you're never far from the sea. So they're what, fishermen?"
Babs gave an embarrassed grin. "Not that sort of Sea Hare. Not even mermaids with bunny ears; they're definitely 'no relation' – like they say, 'all rabbits are bunny, but not all bunnies are rabbits.' Well, those Sea Hares aren't, they're molluscs. Colourful characters, too." She lay back, contemplating. "Buster. You asked, what we might have done to change History. I was thinking about Japan, what Merumo told me just before we left yesterday - our time, that is."
"And that is?" Buster queried, before morphing his ears into a periscope with a blinking eye at the tip, and submerging to line the Good Ship Babs in his sights.
"Well - her company were doing some theoretical Toon Physics that sounds as weird as what we found for Calamity. A whole new class of high-strength, inherently super-Cute materials. They were going to try and make some sort of Gateway with it. Don't ask me how, but I got this funny feeling about the whole thing. I was going to tell her it was a bad, bad idea next time I saw her but, I never got the chance." Babs looked unusually thoughtful.
"Ditzy Anime scientists opening up Gateways to the unknown, with technology they don't yet understand themselves," Buster shrugged. "Hey! What could go wrong with that?"
The phrase 'pretty much everything' hung unspoken in the room like a cloudbank, till a playful water-fight proved FAR more interesting for three very wet jackrabbits.
The next day dawned bright and early, the Sun rising in the East right on schedule, showing good use of reference material. By eight o'clock, young Toons were heading in towards class with rather more enthusiasm than before.
Walking up through the track through Acme forest, were three Juniors - a ewe in an old-fashioned pinafore dress, a black-furred girl with long, lustrous head-fur who appeared to be some sort of canine (it was hard to tell) and a human girl of record-breakingly nondescript appearance. Babs' class notes had identified them as Susie Scrapie, Maloo, and Gina Eriksson. Fortunately, although they had no access to those notes, they knew anyway.
Susie gave a heartfelt sigh, swishing her long skirt hem as she caught sight of the Looniversity through the trees. "I hope dear Herbie sits next to me again," she enthused, a skip in her step. "He's just the peachiest!"
Maloo's head turned to look at the starry-eyed ewe - for certain reasons her expression was unreadable. "He always sits next to you. The arrangements haven't changed since the day we started."
"Yes, but..." Susie ran a comb through her pristine white curly head-fur. "I hope he sits with me today, too."
Gina Ericsson shook her head in exasperation. "Herbie's a good Toon, even if his family don't think so. Threw him out, I heard. The pack told him to pack his bags and go."
"Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Big Good Wolf," Susie pouted. "He can't help his digestion. Not with his vegan diet."
"Wolves really, really aren't evolved to eat wholegrain lentils, or cabbage either, Definitely not the cabbage. The days he eats that, poor Connie Canary keels over inside a minute." Maloo agreed. She paused. "Despite his... problem, it's no wonder you like him out of the family. His relatives would want to eat you."
"Turnaround is fair play," Susie said primly, an extra bounce in her stride as she waved at some familiar folk ahead. "This IS the twenty-first century, after all." She smiled at some secret thought, and her tongue caressed a set of surprisingly sharp, carnivorous-looking teeth.
When they arrived, all three headed to the Toonette's 'powder room' to freshen up - and halted, blinking in surprise at the changes since the day before.
"Where did all the mirrors go?" Gina looked at blank bare walls.
"Yes! How can I look my best for Herbie like this?" Susie complained, pulling out her fur brush from her handbag.
There came a haughty stereo sniff from behind them. Turning, they saw the Mallard girls, Chastity and Fidela. "They were Vanity mirrors," Fidela said haughtily, her fresh-scrubbed bill jerking up contemptuously. "Vanity is a deadly sin, it must be fought. No need to thank us for saving you though, it's simply our duty."
Chastity cast them a superior smile - and hastily reached for her ever-present bottle of 'killjoys'.
Susie's eyes flashed dangerously. For one subliminally brief frame of the film, everyone witnessed a scene of her sitting down at a banquet table with a happy smile, a dainty napkin tucked into her collar, an oversized knife and fork in her hands - and on the table, two big, polished silver platters each containing a done-to-a-turn, life sized roast duck with crispy crackling skin. Mallard variant.
With a stereo squawk the mallard girls fled in a smear of speed-lines and an unexplained aroma of orange sauce, the door banging shut after them.
"Nice special effect! I didn't think we could DO those!" Gina stepped back, impressed. "My cousin Gene was here years ago - it's the sort of thing he told me about."
"I hope the security cameras didn't see it," Maloo looked around nervously. "Not the kind of thing we're meant to do any more." Her head cocked to one side, its expression unreadable as ever. "Though... back then, they'd always have cameras fail at the crucial instant, for plot reasons. And it used to work."
"I should ask Gene," Gina said. "I met him last holiday, on the set of his latest film. Filled in for him on set one day, nobody noticed. They never do." It was a thing with her family; Gene Erikson was building up an impressive portfolio of screen appearances in huge numbers of films, typically acknowledged at the end of the rolling credits as 'waiter' or 'pedestrian #4'.
Maloo nodded. "I can even scent roast duck and orange sauce! That was quite some flash-forward."
"How DO you scent anything?" Susie asked her friend, curiously. "You don't seem to have the biology for it."
Maloo shrugged. "Same way I can see. I just do."
After a mirror-less primping session, the three headed out into the corridor to face the new day, and suddenly stopped as they took in the changes since the evening before. They looked up at two new posters on the wall; one pronounced 'Not TOO much smoking!' and the other 'Not TOO much running with scissors'. Evidently there was a theoretical possibility of some Toon having religious or ethnic traditions requiring them to run a certain prescribed distance with scissors on appropriate holy days.
Susie shook her head. "They're getting worse. Let's start doing something about it. And I mean starting now."
"Not 'Someone' should do something?" Gina queried.
"Nope. Us. Someone should have, a long time ago, but didn't. It's our turn now," Susie said, her expression set. She ran a dainty hoof along a seam of her retro 1950's 'poodle' skirt and looked down at her neat mid-21st century 'attack pit-bull' shoes. "I hope Herbie can help. I think he's SUCH a dish."
"To you – a dish, in more ways than one." Gina frowned. It was one thing for a predator to constantly chase after a herbivore – it had been a staple of the Studio's films till recently. For the determined predator to also have a romantic crush on their potential prey felt wrong somehow for a Toon without spider or praying mantis ancestry. It made the term 'dinner date' more than a little ambiguous. "You actually want to eat him, don't you? The boy you love?"
Suzie sighed, a dreamy smile on her face. "Well… yes. And I know there's a few... problems with that. We're not forbidden plot problems – it's sarcasm, not irony that's illegal. So far."
Maloo shook her head with a bony rattle. "Why not eat someone you don't like? His relatives, I mean?"
"I couldn't do THAT," Suzie objected. "Eat a fellow carnivore? It wouldn't be right." She pulled out a bright silver ring from her pocket and looked at it wistfully. "But dear Herbie… someday I'll make it all worth his while."
Gina blinked, recognising an engagement ring. "You want to marry him – and then eat him? Honeymoon for two, wedding breakfast for one?"
"Now that's a real twist in the old 'have your cake and eat it'," Maloo murmured. "wedding cake, even."
Susie sniffed. "There's no need to make it sound like it's such a weird idea, you know. This IS California. Stranger stuff happens 24/7."
"Well, true," Gina admitted, as they entered the classroom.
With a happy squeal, Suzle spotted her wolf already at his usual desk and sat down in the seat next to him, her tail thrashing with excitement. "Herbie! I've missed you!"
"Groovy." Herbie replied, gesturing vaguely. "You're early - Ms Vanderbunny's not here yet."
"I hope she's brought her baby in again," Gina commented. "I told my folks about that last night - they could hardly believe it, first time in a dozen years round here. I wonder... how."
Herbie shrugged. "Like my family always said - when you're rich enough, laws just don't get in the way any more. Biological ones, even."
Just then the rabbit in question walked in, with her child in its cub-carrier on her back. There was an envious sigh from a dozen female throats at the sight.
'Buffy' checked her notes as she sat down and looked around, scanning the front row. Suzie Scrapie. First carnivorous sheep. A lively girl, if a bit old-fashioned. Extra-keen carnivore - this only became obvious recently. Her family were very concerned about her not loudly praising vegetables like the rest of her sisters when she was younger; something about the Silence Of The Lambs...
Gina raised her hand. "Ms Vanderbunny? Can we... look at your baby? We've never seen a real one, none of us. I asked my parents last night, they said... it just stopped happening."
'Buffy' shook her head. "Not in class. And living with one's parents is highly suspect. Expect it to be banned quite soon."
Gina blinked, eyes wide in astonishment. "But… why?"
'Buffy' gave a condescending smile. "It's the whole 'nuclear family' idea. You do know anything remotely 'nuclear' is such a no-no these days."
There came from the Juniors an untraceable assortment of special-effect sounds, reminiscent of arming switches being thrown and safety catches released. Behind her disguise, Babs Bunny hid a more genuine smile of delight.
Maloo sighed. "I wish I could have stayed with my family. I was raised by the Foundation. I never met my father. I don't know anyone who has, really. Even Mother didn't, to talk to."
'Buffy' checked through her class notes. She had expected the skull-faced girl to be a transfer student from the infamous Addams Academy, classed as 'token Class Nightmare Fuel.' According to Calamity's notes, she was the last Toon to be born in Acme Acres – after her the kindergartens had shut up shop. "The notes don't mention your ancestry."
Maloo inclined her head slightly. "Mother's one of the world's top fashion models," she said simply. "She's always out doing photoshoots, in the most exotic locations. It's non-stop – one long-distance flight and fashion shoot after another, all round the world - never really gets to meet anyone, no social life at all."
"She evidently managed some," 'Buffy' said, an eyebrow raised. 'And he must have been – 'exotic' too." I doubt she got the skull-head from her mother, she thought unless supermodels have REALLY changed style. According to Calamity's confidential notes, her official background of 'recovering head amputee' was yet another bogus claim carefully formulated to tick boxes fulfilling the Principal's principles. Despite the biological difficulties, somehow a sharp brain inhabited that naked skull.
A toon blush radiated an inch clear of the gleaming bone. "Mother said it was – embarrassing. But she was very glad to find out I was on the way – it wasn't happening for anyone else! And the studio was really happy too; they'd got the only model in the whole industry to be boasting a bump in five years – they'd arranged a big 'mother-and-child' photo shoot, commercial endorsements for maternity wear and everything. Then they saw how I … turned out." The blush intensified.
Babs blushed in sympathy. It takes a Toon a LOT of action and extreme drama to get a little of bundle of joy she reminded herself. And I bet as things got worse for Toons it needed to be more and more extreme, till Maloo's the last one. The last gasp of our kind. A supermodel and …. Whatever. That's as extreme as it gets…
Standing up, 'Buffy' addressed the class (mentally adding their Zip codes). "Now, to work. Not all Toons of former years were heavily into comedy, you may be surprised to learn." 'Buffy' announced. "Your dear Principal's classmate Bubba Q. LeBoef (*), combined his Class Antagonist role with a quest for inner tranquillity. He researched a radical new technique for relieving unresolved tensions; he called it 'face punching.'"
* (Editor's note: Bubba's middle name was actually Quentin. Not a name that appealed to him - except that it gave him the opportunity to mercilessly pound any Toon calling him by it. Bubba never needed a justification, only an excuse...)
A skinny and dispirited wolf with shoulder-length head-fur and hippie-style beads raised his hand. "His face or someone else's?"
'Buffy' smiled sweetly. "Let's just say he was always keen to share his techniques with his classmates. It suited him very well; he graduated with a special degree in Practical and Applied Brutality."
"Like, wow, heavy," the wolf shook his head resignedly. "Sounds a real downer."
Babs consulted her class notes. Herbie Hackensaw. Problem Cub of a high-caste Hollywood family, renounced corporate greed and turned vegan. It's not done his health any good, or that of Toons downwind of him… Even as she watched, Connie Canary sniffed, turned pale (a neat trick for a feathered Toon) went rigid and fell flat on her hack, clawed feet in the air.
'Buffy' sniffed. "Now then," she said disapprovingly "I'll have no thug-o-phobic slurs in MY class, IF you please."
In the class next door, 'Biff' was likewise laying down the Law, while behind the facade Buster hoped a good crop of comedic Chaos would eventually follow.
"Today, we start with the fundamentals. Since evidently 'you are what you eat', then evidently you need the correct diet. Or inevitably, you'll end up as the wrong person." 'Biff' declared grandly.
"So we can't even eat what we want any more?" A lioness on the back row put her paw up.
Buster checked his notes. Lucia Leone, they read. Rich family; the family business perfected a gadget for drive-by home deliveries of pizzas. Slinging them accurately through letterboxes at up to 90 yards.
"The whole point…" 'Biff' explained patiently. "Is to break yourself from all the bad habits of the unreconstructed past – especially the ones you never knew about. The idea is to be 'Broke' – in every way. 'Broke' in mind and spirit." He looked around searchingly. "By the time you graduate, your every other thought should be, 'am I as broke as I can be?'" He pointed at Lucia. "You, for example. I saw you eating pizza for lunch yesterday. Don't ever do it again."
"But - why not?" Lucia blinked. "I like pizza. It's sometimes the only remotely edible thing the cafeteria serves."
"A Toon of Italian ancestry eating Pizza - or pasta - is a Toon spreading ethnic stereotyping," 'Biff' said firmly. "You should focus on your guilt."
Douglas Duck raised a feather-hand. "But - can the rest of us?"
'Biff' shook his head. "Certainly not. Eating another nation's cuisine is Cultural appropriation. And before you ask - anyone ordering the hamburger in future, I want to see proof of Hamburg ancestry, with street addresses, names, dates and birth certificates. Just having a great-great-grandfather from Mecklenburg or North Germany will NOT do."
"So... that only leaves us with Native American recipes - Succotash and parched corn and the like?" Threecar raised his hand. A thought struck the mountain lion, and his fur bristled out. "But... by your rules, me and Bronze Eagle can't eat that - and neither can anyone else!"
Victor Lafume raised a two-tone paw. "And so - what can we eat? Not ze 'amburger either, no matter whether you 'ave ze ancestry or not."
'Biff' looked down his muzzle haughtily. "That's your problem. Not my problem. Once you are properly 'broke' you won't let yourself ever ask that sort of question."
Although there were few occasions where a rabbit relished a room half full of carnivores and omnivores suddenly contemplating him as dinner, behind his disguise Buster nodded in satisfaction as a dozen thoughts of hassenpfeffer filled the psychic space strongly enough to manifest as a smell. Let them hate us, so long as they laugh at us.
Lunch at the refectory not being particularly edible for anyone but Bruce Avery (whose ancestry seemed to have elements of trash compactor or black hole to judge by his appetite), Babs and Buster dropped their Vanderbunny personas and met for lunch in Calamity's securely locked office.
Babs looked over the now well-thumbed class notes as she snacked from the Hammerspace hamper. "I think we've got a few promising teams of rebels. My money's on Spike and his pals, from the Juniors." She frowned. "Says here his real name's 'Kilometres'. Weird name to give a kid. Some parents, I mean, honestly…"
Calamity gave a wry shrug. They didn't have a choice. When he was born his folks called him Miles, a good enough name. He paused. When we went metric, they were forced to change it.
"Eww." Babs' muzzle wrinkled in disgust. "Went metric so no more miles allowed, eh? No wonder he goes by 'Spike'." Her ears drooped. "And I've got Maloo in class. She's... kinda unfortunate, with her looks. That's not a problem for me – she's friendly, helpful, does all she can for her friends. And I can tell everyone likes her."
Buster considered. "Wouldn't it funny that a Nightmare-fuel girl turns out the sweetest, kindest girl in school?"
I had to stretch a few rules, just to get her in at all Calamity signed. She's the youngest in the Looniversity; it took me three years to find a last classful as it is. There won't be another.
"That's another thing." Babs looked troubled, glancing over towards her sleeping son. "I've checked; Maloo was the last Toon ever born around here. If little Blitz has to grow up here – he'll be alone, nobody to play with." Her paw unconsciously stroked her tummy-fur. "Well, nobody outside the family. And – I don't want to think of them being the last Toon kids." Traditional rabbit families were not always large, but most managed the old aristocratic ideal of 'a hare and a spare' at least. Or they had.
Buster frowned. "Cal – we've got to find out how all this started. There has to be a clue."
The coyote shrugged helplessly. All the news and everything was on computer. Can't get to it now.
"Hmm. I was thinking – about what might have kicked it all off." Babs mused. "Back in Japan. Merumo's firm were thinking about developing those inherently Super-Cute materials. I wanted to tell her no, but I didn't get the chance."
"What might those have done? If that's what set it all off – that Super-Cute stuff existed, when it shouldn't?" Buster asked.
Calamity shrugged. Who knows? Depends who did what with them.
"Merumo said when she was at school, all the girls wore Sailor-suits – it's an Anime thing," Babs said knowingly. "Each one trying to outdo each other every day, trying to be cuter than the next. Maybe they… used some of the new materials."
"What if her class stood in line? Would it... build up?" Buster speculated.
Calamity looked troubled. It might. And the longer the line, the bigger the build-up; each cuter than the next. The one at the end of the line might reach danger point.
"And…. For the grand finale… what if instead of a line they were all... standing in a ring instead?" Babs asked hopefully.
Calamity sat down heavily, his legs feeling weak. Oh… Saint 'Bob' help us! That's how the Suppercollider used to work – but we used magnets to boost the energy of each test-shot. Every time the payload passed one it got a boost, faster and faster… His sign changed to show a technical diagram of a segmented ring, with a lit section flicking round and round at ever-increasing speed.
"That sounds like it would be bad," Buster said. "Until... what would happen? Something would break?"
"If it was really high-strength super-cute materials… maybe the experiment wouldn't break," Babs speculated "Maybe the bit of reality it was sitting on, broke instead."
A coyote looked extremely worried. We'd know if that happened. Do we know where they might have tested it?
"Not sure..." Babs thought hard, trying to recall a casual conversation simultaneously two days and fifteen years ago.
"She did say, her company was getting research grants from… our, that is Time-Warner's ® ™ © Toon business rivals." Buster looked around furtively, his finger sketching a fast 'D' in the air before any of the almost omniscient lawyers noticed. "They wanted them for their dread castles. There's one in Japan, after all."
"And California, and Florida, and one deceptively nowhere NEAR Paris, just try walking there from the city centre and serve you right," Babs recalled. "What happened to them?"
We don't know. Nobody got out, Calamity signed, a look of horror washing over his face as he assembled two and two like the segments of highly enriched PluToonium slamming together in an 400 kiloToon ACME Landscape Rearranger (Page 401 in the catalogue, gift-wrap options available.) The Florida one... well, we lost Florida, total.
"That was careless of somebody," Babs blinked. "Who had it last? Where did they leave it?"
Calamity's sign showed a familiar outline of the USA; the image shook, and with a loud snap the peninsular broke off like a cup handle. In the great Richter 12 Miami Quake it just – broke loose. Right in the middle of Hurricane YEET!Everyone thinks it just drifted off – nobody's seen it since.
Babs and Buster exchanged glances.
"We need a news professional, someone with the answers," Buster said. "Cal, you said Mary Melody's on Mars these days? Pity, she'd be perfect for this."
"But her kids – I mean, foals, are sitting in our class," Babs tapped her muzzle knowingly. "Let's see if they can help."
After a hasty lunch, 'Buffy' found the very Toons she was after, some from both years sitting together in study hall. "Ms Melody." She announced grandly. "I knew your mother at school – though we lost touch after graduating. What did she end up doing?"
"Mother was a journalist, a really dedicated one" Jenny said. "She got rich and ended up buying the Acme Gazette but stayed there at her old job. She loved the work."
'Buffy' frowned. "How did that work out, if a journalist could tell the Editor what to do? They'd have to print whatever she said. Looks like a sure-fire way to corruption right there."
Jenny's long grey-furred ears dipped. "She never did anything like that! She said, she trusted the Editor and his staff – and they knew their job, so she left them to it."
Behind her façade, Babs smiled. Mary Melody – atta girl! Switching personas, she looked down her muzzle at Jenny. "It all sounds highly suspect to me. Does she still work there?"
But it was Marcus who answered. "No – the paper was closed down. It was declared 'an anachronistic institution incompatible with forward-looking post-truth infotainment ethics,'" the jet-black stallion snorted, his ears right back.
"The building's still there, just the way they left it when they shut the door four years ago. Nobody wants newspapers now, it's all on TV." Jenny's black-tipped equine ears drooped right down like those of a lop rabbit.
"Everything?" An idea came to Babs' sharp bunny brain. "Do they have all their records still? I mean hard copy, not on computer?"
"That's right! I used to go in there a lot, Mother showed me round the whole place," Jenny reminisced. "Microfilm of everything in the basement, old-fashioned magnifying readers that just need a light bulb to work. It's all there just as they left it. I was there in the Easter holidays, to check the place was all right still."
"Another unpopular idea these days," Marcus swished his mane contemptuously. "Hard-copy history that can't be denied or rewritten. Highly unpopular."
"Quite out of keeping with the ideals of post-truth infotainment, indeed." 'Buffy' gave a superior sniff, noting a powerful equine's back hoof starting to tremble as the thought of kicking a Vanderbunny into suborbital flight evidently appealed. She paused. "And do you have – access to the building, by any chance?"
Jenny blinked. "Yes. When Mother left for Mars she left me the keys. They were no use to her out there, after all."
"I see." 'Buffy' drawled. "Convenient. Highly convenient." She nodded to Jenny. "If you could lend them to the Junior class – I have an idea."
In Babs' Looniversity career, it had been no rare thing for an exasperated teacher to pack her off to the Principal's office, where Professor (and Principal) Bugs would reach for his razor-sharp wits and whittle an overexuberant doe's ego down to size, till the inevitable next time. Sixteen years later, Buffy Vanderbunny stood in that same office, glad that the balance of wits was now all on her side of the table.
"So…" Principal Marie Sioux-Zanne said doubtfully. "You want to assign your class a project? To sort through years of old-fashioned news? That sounds a bit… competitive."
"Quite the reverse," 'Buffy' replied smoothly. "No matter how hard they work, there is no prize, no reward. If nobody wins, everybody wins. Quite in tune with the modern ethos, don't you think?"
"Well, when you put it that way…" came Marie Sioux-Zann's slow reply. "For what reason?"
'Buffy' stealthily looked left and right in a conspiratorial pose. "I suspect," she whispered 'That some of our students need assistance in Embracing the Paradigm and Folding with the Margins. There may be residual elements hankering after – true comedy."
The Principal shuddered. "I remember what THAT was like."
"Quite so. I also remember exactly. It won't do, for Toons to go raking up the past. Their unreconstructed thinking need to be pro-actively de-conditioned." 'Buffy' said, smiling. "And so – what better way than to give them an approved project doing just that? Raking through endless archives, all exceptionally hard and pointless work? It will quite de-condition them."
Marie Sioux-Zanne nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Yes, you have my full approval. We cannot have any … borfins, or blorfins, in our not-necessarily educationally-prejudiced establishment."
"Perfect. In the same way the modern trend is to give bank robbers make-work jobs in the banking profession – after a few months of THAT, surely they will never wish to set foot in a bank again!" 'Buffy's' eyebrows wiggled expressively. "This will work just as well!"
Trope #14 in Professor Bugs' Plot Progress classes, Babs thought knowingly as she walked out of a pleased-looking if somewhat bemused Principal's office Villains always fall for cheesy disguises. Well, what do you know? It works for cheesy ideology too!
The day over and a bemused class given their marching (and microfiche-scanning) orders for the next school day on Monday, 'Buffy' happily shed her persona as she joined Buster underground.
"The plot thickens, into a veritable gumbo" she announced grandly. "I've set the Juniors to work scanning for just what happened - in the one place in town that's still got all the facts!" Briefly she ran through her scheme. "Ta-dahh! What do you think? The motherlode of news, and they've got the key to the mine!"
"I think… I married the right girl after all, Mrs Babs 'brains AND beauty' Bunny!" Buster grinned, kissing her. "I also think – you're ahead in the scoring. Now, how to catch up?" He paused, thinking hard. "So, your Juniors are digging up the dirt – I'll have the Seniors sift it, refine it, try and find out what it really means. Time for Elmyra's two to show just what a 4-figure IQ can do. Plus, I've a pair of rivals on the front row who just can't wait to show their stuff. Victor and Douglas. Let's see just how 'Dauntless' that duck is. Or how much of a 'Victor' we've really got, sitting in my class."
"I like it. And it'll get them working together. Handy practice for their other project." Babs waved at the tunnel around them. "They've already found the motherlode of comedy – I checked. So the true ways of the slapstick and the custard pie shall not perish from the Earth!" She spin-changed into a Statue of Liberty pose.
They relaxed and dined from Buster's hammerspace hamper. The blue buck frowned slightly as he rummaged hard to find some carrot-cake dessert. "Supplies are running low, Babsy. Tomorrow's Saturday – best get into town and shop. And see just what Acme Hectares is like these days."
"Acme… ohh. I see they re-named it, when they went metric. Doesn't sound so good." Babs unbuttoned her top and smiled as Blitz nursed. "At least here's one rabbit who's not short of quality cuisine."
"From what Cal says, we're likely in for a few shocks out there," Buster warned. His ears went down, as he listened to the radio playing in the background. "Like – the music styles. What IS that?"
"The Number One hit in the charts right now - by J-pop group 'Danger F.P.B' - that's 'Fashionably Pierced Brains.' Which is something they have; twenty-inch piercings hammered straight through their heads and a foot into the wall behind. Makes touring a bit difficult." Babs' muzzle wrinkled slightly. "It's the current craze - 'Alkali Shack'. The class were talking about it."
"I never liked Acid House; its descendent is NO improvement," Buster opined. His eyes took on a far-away look for a second. "I wonder how Fowlmouth's band got on? They called their stuff 'Extreme Brutal Transuranic Thrash Metal'." He dimly recalled their Japanese backing band Ore of Boron had specialised in 'Ambient Harsh Japanoise' which sounded rather like sticking the microphone in a giant robot's orbital rocket nozzle on full thrust.
"We've got Bruce Avery, he's inherited his parents' musical talent, mostly," Babs mused. "Dizzy was the only Toon drummer who could play Extratone beats by hand - that's 1000 BPM. Bruce doesn't quite do that."
Buster shrugged. "Not everyone gets all their folks' talent."
Babs grinned. "Did I say he's worse? He plays Hypertone, - and that's faster! Without computers, nobody else in the world can play that now. The sound comes out as a square wave..."
A special-effect lightbulb gleamed over Buster's head. "Give me a minute, Babsy. The New Normal should get the music it deserves. And serves it right." He pulled out a jotting pad from his Hammerspace pocket and began to write rapidly.
"It'd be fun to point out new Correct styles that Principal Mary-Sue has to go along with... however bogus," Babs commented. "Every day, even. And watch her scurry to try and find some." She snickered. "Even if she does… by the time she so proudly brings it in the next day for 'show and tell', the Eternal Truths will have changed again. How sad."
"Try this. It's my take on 'buzzword bingo' for the Approved Style of the Day, you just mix 'n' match." Buster suggested. He handed Babs the paper he had been working on, with four neat columns of words:
Hard Ambient Retro Rock
Stripped-down Chilled Thrash Croon
Harsh Industrial Electro Goth
Pumped Dark Euro Metal
Cool Acid Speed Core
Ethnic Alkali Folk Raga
Heavy Lo-Fi Death Jazz
Righteous Bubble-gum Dub Ballad
Deep Neo Funk Yodelling
Atonal Tertiary Synth Noise
Brooding Mellow Psychedelic Skiffle
Raw Intense Immersive Boogie
"Hmm. Swap any pair from the first two, and it makes just as much sense. Heh." Babs tapped her front chisel-teeth thoughtfully. "Anyone for Harsh Ambient Speed Croon? Or Ambient Ethnic Electro Yodelling?" She cast her husband a knowing look. "We could have SO messed with some Perfecto heads with this. I never thought we'd have a worthier target but… we've got plenty. Ain't we just."
"As Shirley's military bunch probably say – 'don't call it 'surrounded'. Call it a Target-Rich Environment!'" Buster nodded. "And that's what we've got."
"Embarrassment of riches, that's the phrase," Babs agreed. "And these targets, we'll do more than embarrass!"
They relaxed, watching as Blitz played with the fuzzy blocks, arranging them into tesseracts, hypercubes and super-cubes. From somewhere ill-defined came a distant sound as of animators and story-boarders screaming in anguish.
"That's one talented Toon we're raising," Buster hugged his pink-furred wife lovingly. "Though Calamity has a few... issues with what he does. Said he broke some 'four-colour theorem' or other yesterday."
"He's just a cub, he can't help it." Babs shrugged. "Just like medics have a Hippocratic Oath - Calamity's sworn to uphold the laws of physics. We're not." She paused. "Makes you wonder what old Professor Knott-Bormann wanted that Time Machine for. Maybe he wanted to go back and change things."
"He's not the only one; I really hope we can get it working," Buster said. "But whenever I mention it Cal starts to twitch." Calamity's display board was prone to bursts of static with panicked-looking phrases such as 'Dynamic aether vortices?' and 'forbidden scalar physics!' flashing cryptically across the screen.
Just at that moment that very same coyote walked in. And though a coyote's ears did not quite match a rabbit's for plot-altering perfection, they were sharp enough. As well I might! This is Occulted Science we're talking about! Forbidden territory!
"It is to you, Cal, so you keep saying." Babs said patiently. "You care about that sort of stuff. To us… it's just another Plot Device. As long as it works, we're fine with it."
Yes. Well. I've been looking at the manual. I can maybe blow a fifteen-year deep Plot Hole in EinsToonian spacetime; the folk who built this didn't like his ideas anyway. But that's only the start of the problem, Calamity signed tetchily.
"Well, that's all we need. One rabbit-hole fifteen years deep in time. We dive back through it and – happy endings all round. Except for Ms Mary-Sue, who probably winds up cleaning the grease-pits of Weenie-Burger, forever. How hard can that be?" Babs asked brightly.
Calamity sat down with a heavy thump on the sofa. His eyes crossed and something that looked like Wibble… wibble… wibble…. flashed across his sign in a broken font.
"I think you blew his fuse," Buster whispered sympathetically.
Calamity shook his head as if to clear it. How hard can it be? Even if I got that… thing working, I don't know where to point it.
"Fifteen years. We can give you the day, hour and minute if you like," Babs said helpfully. "Even better – send us back earlier, before we left, so there's two lots of us. One Babs and Buster can stay awhile in Neo-Tokyo and get to watch the Irresponsible Tank Driver of the Year contest!"
It doesn't work like that. Calamity sighed. Put it like this. When we're filming, we start off with a pristine white-paper copy of the script, right? But that's not how it stays.
"That's right!" Buster nodded. "There's cuts. Edits. Rewrites. Sometimes whole scenes go. Rewrites on different coloured pages … the scripts start off plain white, ends up rainbow."
Well. Imagine every change – instead of one script that's changed, it splits off into two separate ones. Everything that can possibly happen – does. And somewhere there's the version you want. But where?
"Hmm." Buster considered. "So… we're trying to jump to the right page of the right script… in a library of scripts? And we don't have the floor plan or the filing system?"
Something like that. And the shelves are stacked for miles up, down and sideways. Probably a LOT of different kinds of sideways. Calamity's ears drooped.
"We'd need a computer to plot the course, even if we HAD the library index. And… I know that's a problem, no computers. Even if we had one – we don't know the right question to ask." Buster's ears dipped in sympathy. "It'd take a genius. And one who already has half the answers."
That's right. If you just go back fifteen years – to the wrong script – you'll end up in some history or other. But which? I mean, it might be an even worse California where Emperor Norton's dynasty died out! That'd be horrible!
"Emperor who?" Babs blinked. "Since when are we a monarchy?"
Calamity stared at her for a few seconds, looking puzzled. Since… 1859, and Norton the First? He handed Babs a local newspaper titled 'California Court Chronicle' and turned to the back page. There was a section 'Royal Sports News' and a large article with the header 'Norton Ninth nails gnarly ninety-footer!' A picture showed a handsome, tanned Human toon wearing baggy board shorts and a waterproof sports crown, skilfully riding a surfboard down a wave of apocalyptic proportions.
Ooh boy, Babs' ears semaphored Buster in private lapin code. Just when we thought we were looking at the home straight… we're further from home than ever. We've not just jumped forward. Sideways too, looks like.
Check on that, Babsy, Buster confirmed glumly. Calamity's past – looks like ours. But it isn't really. Going back in time isn't the half of it -
We've got to head back exactly the right distance, take the right direction in directions nobody ever heard of… Babs declared … and THEN look out for that tricky left turn near Albuquerque!
End Chapter Three
