Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for Disney's reduced profits and plummeting artistic vision due to the "hiatus" of Phil of the Future. I don't even own it. Wish I did, because that is great story telling. Remember the days when Disney would capitalize every which way on one of their cartoons, movies, t.v. shows? What happened? So far, Phil of the Future is relegated to a single DVD (okay, there' s the bonus on the Christmas disk), a few scripts masquerading as books, and a video game. Was this a pilot that was canceled? No? What! It ran for two full seasons with fans demanding it continue??
"We're living in strange times, Daddy-O, when bad television roams the Disney Channel unrestricted, and no one can buy a Wizrd or skyak at Toys 'R' Us. Not even a stinkin' PotF coloring book."
Author's Notice: As was suggested by surreaLpink, Chapter 5 now goes back even further – both directions – with Plus 3 Years and Plus 3 Seconds. They're just a paragraph apiece, so they're worth your while to go back and read before starting with this here chapter. The first one was updated just before publishing this chapter.
Go ahead. I'll wait right here.
Doody, doody, doo ... back already? Gee, that was swift! You liked it? I'm so glad. Okay, on with the story!
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The F-Word – Chapter Six – "Truth Under Fire"
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TONIGHT in Present Day Pickford Minus 3 Millionths of a Second:
The nanite screaming is one of billions Pim programed her brother's Wizrd to crank out every night for months. It's just doing it's job. It doesn't feel any pain. It's screaming for another reason and it only has about two millionths of a second left to do it.
According to the algorithm Phil created to determine the likely entry vectors for any time machines entering Pickford, she had distributed the microrobots sparsely around community in a pattern that resembled the world's largest and sparsest snowflake. Wasn't perfect, resources were limited, but the bots were their one and only early warning system in case, just in case, the worst of the worse case scenarios happened. Ridiculous, actually. A billion, billion, billion nanites were needed to complete the sensor net; imagine the kind of luck needed for it to actually detect a time machine coming into town at this point in the grid's deployment. Needle in a haystack odds. Go buy a lottery ticket luck.
Like all of its kind, the nanite designated 0x237646804 is far too minuscule to be detected by an incoming TimeFlyer®, let alone early 21st Century inhabitants. Three months waiting for a moment of fame, then during the last millionth of a second of it's existence it's molecular circuitry is fried by the highly ionized hull of the incoming TimeFlyer, but not before it fulfills it's purpose. It's shrill cry throughout the smart dust network is starkly simple: "Positive Contact. THEY'RE HERE!"
Aboard the CCC's Personnel Carrier: Tim and Doug are giving the update to the mission summary, but confident they're not. Memories of their possible future selves exiting the transport are still giving them pause. This may take dozens of missions to clean up; those guys looked like they had been through a war. Despite what they had been briefed about the Diffys, they were still just a regular family, right?
Darlene kept her eye on the vehicle's camouflage on the heads up display; no sense causing more problems than they were sent to solve. No problem. It was stable. She was a professional and didn't dare take her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at the drama in the rear of the transport. Run over a cat, scratch a car, hit a kid, be pulled over for a ticket; it didn't take much of any little thing to alter the time line and it took even less bad luck to damage it enough to catch the attention of those monitoring the chronos for aggravation. Those'd cost her demerits. Demerits would cost her a promotion – enough of them could cost her her job. No Diffy demerits for her. The pilot's only responsibility was to get the team there and back without such incidents that'd require more return trips to erase the damage. At least the future versions of themselves returned with the TimeFlyer undamaged. She would do her bit. Milk run.
Nervously Doug ate another handful of nachos while Tim continued the update. "Here's what we know, all five targets are confirmed. The daughter is the biggest challenge, evidently she'll go down, but not without some damages to us, especially you two." Spin and Marty looked pale, the rest grumbled or snickered and pointed. Spin loosened his lanyard tie.
"Da Vess," Doug blurted out through a mouthful of partially masticated chips.
"What? Oh yeah, the vest. Evidently, the couple's daughter goes Wizrd happy and in her carnage, we have to outfit her brother with a pudding vest. Spin, Marty, that'll be your job. Get it on him fast and maybe you'll save us an extra trip back here."
"Da Gasses."
"What? Do you hafta ... oh, 'glasses.' Yes, we're arriving at night, so goggle up, everyone." The charcoal-suited men donned night-vision glasses that made the darkness irrelevant, and everything they saw in brilliant, living color.
Back on the roof: Even from this distance, Phil could read Pim's expression, making words between them unnecessary. He stuffed his now barely glowing omkar into Keely's jeans's right front pocket, took a deep breath and commanded, "Anybody asks, you only know me from school. I'm just a classmate, nothing more. Now, go home, please Keels."
"Phil! What's go--"
"No time! Go!" Phil swung under the pipe, then stood and waved his arms at Pim, knowing full well what she would do. Pim did actually question herself if she was doing the right thing. If she were caught, well, let's just say that some folks don't have a well developed sense of humor about these things. Nevertheless, he was her brother, so she aimed her Wizrd at him and POW! Phil disintegrated; vanished, anyway. Keely was too shocked for words. How could she do that to Phil? Yet before Keely could decided Pim's fate, Phil reappeared, slightly different clothes though, and complete with omkar on an orange cord this time.
"Phil, what's going on? The truth!"
"Thank you for a nice night, Keely. I have to go now. Please walk immediately home. Good night." Then, without even looking, he zipped down the ladder with his feet skipping every rung and headed toward the backyard.
Greenemia, morphed into another's body, mind transfers, raisins baked into an angel food cake, housing a caveman in their garage, Keely had thought she'd seen all the strange behaviors that the Diffy family was capable of. Even the use of their fantastic gadgets had become mundane to her. But this facade masquerading as her fiancé -- what's up with that? "Nice night?" What kind of talk is that for a fiancé? Pim! What had she done to Phil? Keely's eyes scanned whatever she could see from the light of the street lamps. First to the koi pond, then to the rest of the neighborhood, – all of a sudden the street lights flickered and died. All the lights in Pickford Heights Adjacent were out, even the prison. What's going on? Well, she wasn't going to find out on this roof. Time for action.
Pim was already inside. She could hear her parents upstairs, but where was Phil and what happened to the lights? She pulled out her Wizrd again and scanned the immediate area. Seven more blips than necessary -- six, if you didn't count Keely. Let's see, two by the time machine, two coming up the front stairs and, oh no, two right behind ...
"Hold it right there, Pee-Wee," ordered Roy.
"Rat Snacks," Pim let slip; however, she wasn't referring to getting nabbed, she expected that, but the plan ... "Guess what time it is. It's clobberin' time!" announced Pim.
"We don't plan on hurting you; we're here to take you home. Just come along ..."
"Oh, I wasn't speaking to you," Pim corrected. Her adversaries looked at each other puzzled.
"Ka-Lunk," collided their skulls. Roy and Walt never saw it coming. All they'd remember was Pim's menacing grin, then their goggles flew off as their heads struck the floor.
"Egata," a smiling Curtis replied behind them.
"Good work, thanks Curtis, now keep it quiet, will ya? I gotta check for the others." Nothing more behind me, oh no! One's on the stair case and another two are already upstairs and one more's in the living room, but where's Phil? Pim peeked around the corner. Sniffing the air, Curtis peeked at the fruit soup. "Curtis!"
"Teeyah Makkah?"
"What does that mean?"
"They come back?" translated the Cro-Magnon.
"Now is not the time to think of your stomach. We've got a situation here."
Curtis gave Pim a quick and quiet "no – duh" raspberry, pushed her aside and took point. Taking up a mop from the closet, Curtis dipped it in the soup, then rounded the corner in his attacking stance – he wasn't hunting; the prey knew they were here, but Curtis had experience being hunted while hunting his prey. Spotting the first intruder in the living room, he thrust the wet business end of the mop in the guy's stomach, then his face, spun the handle around planted the hard end in his now unconscious opponent's soon-to-be sore left foot. Instantly, the CCC agent dropped the extra pudding jacket that he had brought in. The caveman didn't even see his prey's cohort on the stairs calmly zap him with a Wizrd. Curtis froze, but Pim had his back. The high ground was no advantage against Pim's Wizrd doing the same to him. Didn't work though. Pudding jacket. Her target now was firing back, so Pim retreated for cover. She couldn't get a clear shot at him.
Upstairs, it was polka time. Thanks to another one of Pim's home security devices, the four adults were insta-morphing among themselves. Sometimes they were each other, other times famous historical figures or one another. Everyone was panicked and wrestling among one another. How would any couple feel if Genghis Khan and Queen Elizabeth ran into their bedroom and tried dragging them out of their house? Probably a lot like the elder Diffys, crying out for one another, threatening their attackers, and Barb and Lloyd are tall – great for leverage. Agents Tim and Doug definitely had their hands full.
"Pinned down, like a rat," cursed Pim at her luck. "The Wizrd is useless against pudding and I need the staircase intact for the plan to work. Pictures and knick-knacks were being knocked off the wall from Wizrd zaps. "Oh, Curtis?" she cried out with a sing-song lilt. She aimed her Wizrd at Curtis reviving him. Disoriented, but silent, Curtis picked up on what was going on and, now using his mop as an apricot, banana, kiwi, orange and strawberry scented spear, knocked the Wizrd out of the hand of their mutual enemy. Deprived of his Wizrd, Marty was still depending on his pudding vest for protection. "Curtis, tsee nah," Pim declared. Poor Marty didn't quite catch that, but the family caveman did. A quick bop on the head and Marty go night-night.
With steps creaking under her, Pim had made it upstairs past the stairway sleeper and Curtis, intending to support her parents' efforts. Passing the doorway to her brother's room along the way, she spied inside. There was Phil calmly sitting on his bed. "Okay, this can still work." Her parents weren't a priority if she could pull this off. After all, they weren't in any real danger, but she'd be. Pim grabbed Phil and positioned him behind the unconscious man on the stairs and one step lower, ordered Curtis to stand a step higher to hold the intruder upright between Phil and himself, and shake the hooligan. Then she climbed back up and wizrded a hole in the wall for cover.
From her pilot's seat, Darlene watched the blips of her team stop moving or make no appreciable progress. "Those jelly babies, we're going to be stuck on this retrieval forever. Eventually, stray Wizrd fire is going to damage the ride and I'll be blamed. Demerit city. Oh no, not again!" She grabbed a pudding jacket and Wizrd and left her responsibility unlocked and open.
Entering the house, Darlene saw what Pim wanted someone to see: A caveman struggling with Marty, Phil cowering behind Marty, and a ruckus going on upstairs, but out of sight. Then she saw the Diffy family daughter literally holed up and firing a Wizrd at Marty and Phil.
Pim cried out, "This is your fault! You want to go back! I'll get you Phil!"
A few badly aimed zaps with the Wizrd were still enough to convince Darlene that Pim met business. Diving for the empty pudding jacket, she threw it to Phil and ordered him to put it on. Zap! Down goes the caveman dragging Marty with him down the stairs. Darlene zaps away Pim's cover and Pim drops her Wizrd in defeat. Darlene picks it up carefully and motions Pim to lead the way to the noise at the end of the hall. Quite a sight to behold: Mr. Rogers, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Phyllis Diller and Mother Teresa all wrestling on the floor. Fully abandoning her "I just drive the rig" attitude, Darlene bellowed, "ENOUGH!" They stopped, except for heavy breathing. "What's going on?"
Rogers and Ghandi simply said, "Pim."
"All right, all right." Pim waved her hand beneath the doorway's arch and, one by one, everyone morphed back into their own selves.
Doug flashed a hologram of their retrieval authorization and then ordered everyone aboard the CCC's time machine. Sure, the Diffys had questions, but he was not in any mood to answer them, and what's more, he didn't have to.
Watching from the neighbor's well-trimmed hedge, Keely could make out Wizrd zaps as the only lights in the darkened neighborhood, and bits of the shouting. "Pim's really trying to hurt Phil. But that doesn't make any sense. Sure, she's Pim, but she's the one who wants to go back, not Phil. Not my Phil. Uh-oh."
The Diffys were led outside to the waiting time machine by Darlene. Pim had considered hitting her favorite extra light switch as they exited the house, but it seemed like overkill even to her. She had what they wanted.
Darlene commanded, "I'll take that pudding jacket back now, Phil."
"Are you sure that it'll be safe?" he reasonably asked, looking like a scared little boy.
Darlene took one look aft at her teammates being levitated to the vehicle, some of them unconscious. Then another look forward at Pim. Maybe the pilot had gotten lucky tonight, but how long would that luck hold? "Keep it on. Let's go," and they returned to boarding.
"Watch 'em," Tim ordered, "oh, and thanks," with a smile that recognized that she'd single-handedly salvaged the mission. Somebody from this squad would be finding her name on the promotion list after this. Tim rejoined Doug inside, already wizrding away the damage from tonight's escapade and erasing the Diffys's presence. Gone were Pim's traps, every drawer was emptied, and all furniture and personal family items were miniaturized. Curtis's garage was sterilized in all manner possible and the rented time machine was shrunk and stowed aboard their return craft. Finally, even Pim's tunnels were undone, filled in with compacted soil as if she had never excavated any of them.
Doug called out to Tim, "So, we good to ... uh-oh."
"What? The house is wiped clean. Whatduhya mean, 'Uh-oh?'" Tim spied Doug's Wizrd's screens and their detection of a heartbeat and heat signature outside. They headed out the door towards Keely.
Keely had just about decided how to try and rescue the Diffys when she saw Doug and Tim coming directly her way. Slipping behind a tree, she made it look as if she had been walking toward them all the time, but it wasn't altogether convincing.
Almost invisible in only their dark gray two-piece uniforms, their pudding jackets discarded, Doug and Tim approach Phil's fiancée on the lightless sidewalk. "Night, Miss. Watcha' doing watching the Diffys' house? It's late; watcha' name?"
"I'm a classmate of Phil's. We're working on a school science project," I respond indirectly. I don't like talking to strangers any time, but especially on a dark street and with my family in some oversized van. Phil said to just act like we only went to school together and go home. I trust you, Phil, but this is tough. I don't think ...
"Watcha' think, Tim?"
Keels looks at Tim's eyes; he's examining her face. He spots her smeared raspberry lipstick and his entire body language changes. Doug picks up on this and they both get ready to confront Keely. "On the roof?" Tim asks while jerking his head back to the house, having noticed both the ladders on the outside of the building.
"Yes, senior astronomy club."
"We'd like you to come ..."
They're both getting confrontational, trying to intimidate the young lady in the dark. A heavy handed tactic that works almost every time with most kids on dark nights, and especially a girl alone being accosted by two strange older men wearing sunglasses.
"Interesting lapel pin, what does 'CCC' stand for? Are you a locally based company? Where is your company headquarters located? Did you know that Pickford requires that all new companies get a focus story about them welcoming them to the community? Now, can I get your names and when I can send over a film crew for your interview?" Yes, that tactic of theirs should've worked, but Keely Teslow is not most teens. She's protected the Diffys' secret for over two years. Protected. Courtesy of the Giggle, she's glimpsed her future. She's accepted the confident woman that she's growing into being and it's given her the kind of strength that every young adult-in-the-making should be lucky enough to have. Whatever is happening tonight, she's not scared as much as she is furious. She can't yell at Phil, so Keely goes into investigative star reporter mode and takes the offensive, asking the kind of questions that the CCC has never before been confronted with and all from the innocent facade of blonde teenage girl. They're used to their targets running or being compliant, not turning and attacking. First the Diffys and now a blonde bull-in-a-china-shop. Doug gives Tim a look that let's him know that this isn't worth it. He doesn't want to spend two weeks debriefing at HQ over Tim being suspicious over some kissing. There wasn't any lipstick on the boy anyway. More importantly, Doug has laser squash tickets for tomorrow night. We're not going to make another trip back here and go through all that again! He twitches his head back to the awaiting time machine, signaling to his partner that it's time to get out of here. Turning, they retreat without a word and Keely heads home while holding back her own sobs. The time machine spins around in the driveway and heads back the way it came. Keely turns and follows running after it, the soles of her shoes slapping against the cement sidewalk. She's both surprised and tense when the street lights buzz and shine once again. Then a bright orange glow appears, a sonic shimmy, and nothing is there any longer. Not the strange van, not her family, not her world, and not her heart. She almost makes it to her front door without wailing. Where this tough, confident young woman unleashes twin rivers of tears onto her doormat, crying out against the theft of her heart.
Not the end ...
Please leave your thoughts.
egata surprise attack
tsee nah for you
To all that can enjoy an exceptionally good first "T," and now "M" rated (for suggestive eyebrows) Pheely story without Phil and Keely, I most highly recommend (translate as Required Reading) Hourglass, a time traveling epic by Mr. Fishy, who also graces PotF with stories. Over 250 reviews are not wrong – that's 17 pages of reviews! Really, they're not! Beyond great writing, this is art! Plus, the author responds at the beginning of most chapters to my tortur – er, teas – um, Technicolor reviews? (Give me a break. I ran out of Ts.)