November 2nd, 2017
07:00 UTC (7:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time)
Penguin HQ
(Skipper's POV)
It was about seven hours since we sent Julien and Co. back to Madagascar. We were still tired from all the craziness of the previous day. The last time we had a good night sleep was the night of October 31st. We're currently operating on 2 hours of sleep and that was just this morning. At about Oh four hundred we managed to send back the other members of Julien's kingdom that got sent here. We hit the sack at around Oh five hundred hours (or Five A.M.) and slept until…Now.
I went up to the coffee machine and got my daily morning coffee with a fish in it. I slowly sipped my "#1 Skipper" mug as the caffeine slowly woke me up. Private was somehow wide awake and bushy tailed watching his favorite Cartoon hippy ponies. Rico was over at the table getting ready to make a breakfast of ice-cold sushi. I glanced over at the calendar and groaned; Kowalski had excitedly scheduled an unveiling of his latest invention…. today.
Let's hope it doesn't go horribly wrong, threaten to destroy the world, or both as usually happens with HIS inventions. I am not looking forward to yet another hard to pronounce name and equally hard to understand explanation. I wish that Julien had picked today to do his "royal visit" instead of yesterday. I'm still sore from the beat-down Julien's Security Adviser delivered yesterday. I trust the "one-lemur" army even less now…granted she was turned into a Sleeper against her will…but still. But enough about the other day…back to focusing on today. I'm still holding out faith that this latest invention of Kowalski…won't blow up in our faces.
"Alright," I said, "Private, that enough rainbow ponies for today."
"Aw," Private said as I switched the TV off.
"When was the daily announcements scheduled?" I said.
Suddenly the national anthem rang out over the intercom. Kowalski rushed out of the lab pulling a tarped object out on a cart.
"Fall in for Roll-call!" I said.
"Blah blah blah," Rico said. (translation: Quartermaster Rico reporting)
"Lance Corporal Private Reporting for duty!" Private said.
"Lieutenant Kowalski Reporting for duty," Kowalski said with a salute.
"At ease soldiers," I said as the anthem finished.
"Today is the 2nd of November. It is currently 07:15 UTC. 7:15:35 A.M. EST. the weather today is a chilly 30 degrees, cloudy with a 60% chance of frozen rain and snow. There are no major Severe weather events today. Tomorrow is cloudy with a 50% chance of snow. Traffic in the city of New York is currently rated at: poor. The tri-state is listed as: very poor. You currently have a New Invention Unveiling scheduled at 07:30 UTC. Now here are today's important reminders…"
"The Anti-matter fusion Reactor Core is currently at 95% efficiency. Reactor integrity is holding and the meltdown risk for today is Extremely low. Reminder: Scheduled Maintenance is scheduled for November the 30th 2017 at at exactly 05:15:24 P.M. EST. 17:00 Hours UTC. Failure to keep this date and time could result in Core Meltdown and the ripping of the time-space continuum."
"Important reminder: The Containment field of the giant eye on Sub-level Four is faulty. Please check the integrity of the field."
"Attention! Please check the integrity of the containment field of UFO 145 in Sub-level three."
"There are no recorded Personnel Messages for today."
"There are no more reminders or alerts…have a nice day," the alert computer said, "the next daily report will be at precisely…7:00:00 A.M. EST. 07:00 Hours UTC. Tomorrow. Or at the earliest convenience. If you're not in the elevator at that time it will be delivered over the base intercom system. If you would like to change the scheduled time, please say so. Also, I would like to apologize for the delay of today's daily announcements and reminders."
"Time?" I asked.
"7:15," Private said checking his watch.
"All right Kowalski, what crazy invention do you have for us this time," I replied taking another sip of my coffee.
"If I can bring your attention to this tarped object," Kowalski said walking over to it.
"Imagine if you could enter any work of fiction that exists in physical and digital format," Kowalski said, "And I mean Any kind of fiction…Books, Movies, video games, comics, works of fanfiction...anything made up."
"Kowalski we can hop over to whatever alternate Universe we want," I said.
"Yeah but other realities have slight differences in things like certain events, timelines, character traits, appearances, species, location names, etcetera that would make the fan-bases cringe."
"Cut to the chase," I said.
"Behold comrades," Kowalski said removing the tarp, "The machine that makes that possible…The Defictioner!"
The invention itself was an unassuming Arcade game cabinet. Of course, Kowalski stuffed an advanced dual monitor computer, a sever, two CPUs, 2 keyboards, a wired pro-controller, a bar-code reader, UBS ports, and some strange looking machinery into it. The Machine had an Ethernet cable running from it and what appeared to be a Digital Scanner attached to it. One of the machine's monitors had Fanfiction loaded while the other had a "Defictioner" app loaded.
"At least it's easy to pronounce," Private said.
"We have The Space Time Teleport, The Universe Hopper, and the Portal Opener/closer," I said, "why do we need another multiverse hopping machine?"
"There is one kind of universe that we can't enter," Kowalski said, "the universes of fanfiction authors."
"That one about me understanding Rico speech was pretty interesting," Private said.
"The one with you and Blowhole in a relationship is a little weird," Skipper said.
"Personally, I enjoy the work of one Pronker," Kowalski said.
"Anyway," Kowalski said, "with this machine I can scan the covers of any book, video game, comic, or movie…OR browse for a certain fanfic or input a known story ID."
"We can then either enter the world contained in the medium or fanfic OR bring objects or OC's into this world."
"So, let's pick a fanfic and enter it," I said.
"Sorry no can do," Kowalski said, "as I don't have permission from any author to use their stories, worlds, or OCs we can't just go into any random story."
"So to start off we'll just use one of the stories posted under our alias Penguin Adventures," Kowalski said, "I'll pick one that isn't part of the F.A.N.F.I.C.T.I.O.N Antidisclosure project."
"What's the F.A.N.F.I.C.T.I.O.N project again?" Private said.
"Converting some of the IPSA mission files into fanfictions," Kowalski said, "fudging some of the details and adding deliberate spelling mistakes. Planting some bad ideas into certain author's heads to dilute the real secretly released Intel. Even adding in some non-canon relationships to further confuse people and divide the fandom."
"Why Divide the TPOM fandom though," Private said.
"Because then the fans would be too busy arguing with each other to notice anything…off," Kowalski said.
"But why have that information out in the open," Private said.
"Don't you get it Private," I said, "the Madagascar Movies, the official books, the holiday specials, All Hail King Julien, Our TV Show, the fanfictions! It's all part of the efforts to hide information about animal operations in plain sight!"
"The actual information on missions authored by actual penguin agents, mixed in with actual fanfictions written by actual fanfic writers. Plus, some that are written by fanfic writers who had ideas planted in their minds while they were sleeping by penguin agents. Fanfic writers and fanfic readers are completely unaware that they might be reading or writing actual events…or things pulled from actual events," Kowalski said.
"So, some of the fanfics I read," Private said, "might be fully or partially based on actual operations?"
"Correct," I said, "and if some information about current operations are accidentally or purposely leaked…"
"Nobody would believe them," Kowalski finished.
"So, the writers aren't even aware of this," Private said.
"The few that are aware are penguin agents, humans acting as penguin agents, the occasional "unknown" guest reviewer, or authors that mysteriously stopped updating stories," Kowalski said.
"What happened to those writers?" Private said.
"They discovered the truth about the Penguins of Madagascar category," I said, "and were given an ultimatum by Penguin Agents."
"Work for the penguin organization," Kowalski said, "or go on permanent hiatus and stop writing fanfictions."
"What happens if they pick neither," Private said.
"They get their memories wiped and stop anyway," I said.
"The side effect of the memory wipe is that they lose all desire to write anything,' Kowalski said, "but to the rest of the world they just grew up and stopped doing immature things like writing fanfics."
"So, did you pick a fanfic for The Defictioner?" I asked.
"I found the perfect fanfic to use for our experiment," Kowalski said pulling up a random "penguin adventures" written story.
"Okay," Kowalski said, "The Penguins of Madagascar Specials: alternate version is the perfect alternate fictional universe or as I named it AFU to visit."
"Enter alternate fictional universe (AFU) mode," The Defictioner computer said.
"Error!" both monitors read.
"Shutting down," appeared on the monitors before the screens went dark.
"What," Kowalski said, "that should have worked. The science was solid!"
"Why don't you fix your machine and we can do this later,' I said rolling my eyes.
"Back to the lab," Kowalski said pulling his machine with him.
Kowalski then muttered something about, "another failure" and probably something about, "bird brains" and "science haters".
"When do you think he'll fix that by?" Private said.
"Next week," I replied as I heard Kowalski lock the lab door.
(end of chapter one)