Chapter 14: A Private Performance

Behind a large warehouse, one of the sorts which catering companies used as a storage, was where Todd lived. The entrance was hard to spot, it was basically a hole in the ground right next to the northern warehouse wall. Todd's place itself was entirely hidden below the surface, dug out of the compressed desert sand by a much larger animal, so it was large enough for him to have objects inside of it which were a lot bigger than him. For the same reason, the entrance tunnel was notably oversized for a mouse's needs, too, and although it was built with a downward slope, its floor was even and lacking stairs.

As he was on his way down the tunnel, Todd took a glance over his shoulder, for what was going on sill went beyond his imagination, and he felt he needed another proof that it was real. Outside, in the shadow of the warehouse, the Rangerplane and the Rangerwing were parked, and the Rescue Rangers themselves were following him into his humble living-place.

He quickly cast another glance and saw Gadget walking right behind him and smiling at him. "Don't worry, Todd, we're still there," she said.

"I know, I know," he answered. "It's just... unreal. The Rescue Rangers at my place. Incredible."

"Golly, we're not a product of your imagination, Todd. We're as real as you."

Chip added, "Remember we're on a case together. How real does that make us?"

Todd stopped and turned around. "You got me, Rangers." He raised both hands as if to praise them. "I believe! I want to believe in you!" Dale and the girls giggled, and Zipper flew around him several times to see that sight from all sides.

The team of small animals soon reached the deepest part of the tunnel where a fine stainless steel girder covered a hole in the floor. "I've installed this drain to keep rain water from flooding my place," Todd explained. "It doesn't rain often here, but that doesn't mean it never rains. And while the hare who lived here before me said she appreciated the occasional flushing, and it helped her keeping the place clean, I prefer my stuff dry."

He then led the Rangers the couple of inches up to the door which he had installed, too. A rubber sealing helped keep dust and water out. Causing a slight plop sound, he opened the door and motioned the Rangers to enter.

So they did and found themselves in a main room with only sparse furniture which, unlike the place it was in, matched a mouse's size rather than a hare's. A few shelves could be found standing along the walls. To the left, there was a table mostly consisting of an empty thread spool. There were also two wooden stools, much like human ones. Todd had gotten himself two of them in the rare case of someone visiting him. But he had quickly lost his belief in this ever happening when it never happened, so he usually placed all sorts of things upon one of them when he found no other place for them. Now that he did have visitors, a half-open matchbox full of paper occupied one stool.

Apart from the entrance door, three doors led to other rooms. They were all closed, so whatever was behind them remained hidden. Electricity was available, tapped from the warehouse, and fed devices from the lights on the ceiling making up for the lack of windows to a large wall plug which in turn was connected to a handheld device, easily the largest item in the room, which was lying on a custom-made wooden stand with a pair of wheels under one end and a handle at the other. It was positioned near the wall to the right with its display turned upward. High-tech devices like this one were what caught Gadget's attention first. "Golly," she expressed her amazement, "this is the PDA you were talking about?" Her eyes wandered on and discovered a mouse-sized computer keyboard with wireless infrared connection and the modem Todd had spoken about earlier.

"Yes," Todd answered, "this is it."

The inventor mouse examined the stand from all sides. "And it can be tipped to the side on this stand. Here are the hinges, and..."

"Well, sometimes I need to see the display from farther away." Todd gave a demonstration by lifting what was originally designed to be the PDA's right, tilting it to the left, and locking it in a 45 degrees position. "Playing music, however, is easier when it's lying or tilted only slightly." He laid the small computer down again and started it up. After watching the boot sequence, he tapped his hand on an icon on the touch screen, and a program opened. The many buttons and sliders which appeared were probably too small for most humans and the pens delivered with these devices, but perfect for rodents. Besides, the whole user interface was rotated to be used from the left where the hinges of the stand were. On the same side, two virtual keyboards with 88 keys each appeared. White keys were three pixels wide, black keys only two pixels, so playing them with a pen was out of question. "Homebrew music workstation software," Todd explained with a bit of a smile. "It's amazing how much sample material fits onto a couple of years old flash memory cards, and how modern portable devices have grown powerful enough for multitimbral sample players and sequencer applications to run fluently."

Tammy didn't understand Todd's technobabble, but what she understood was that he had turned the small computer into an electronic musical instrument of sorts. "Todd," she asked, "would you play for us?"

Todd, who was about to rant on, stopped immediately and turned to her and the other Rangers.

"Please? Pretty please?"

He did have something to play, and having spent a lot of the previous few months' time rehearsing and programming, he would probably not disappoint his guests skill-wise. He even had a monitor system rigged up with broadband speakers salvaged from a pair of hi-fi headphones.

But there was still his shyness, he hadn't played for anyone for half a year, and even then he played in a large orchestra almost every time he played at all. "Well, I... don't know if we've got enough time..."

"We've got plenty of time," Chip said, "unless your PDA's system clock is all wrong."

Todd knew that he had no chance to escape. He let a few seconds pass without doing anything, just standing where he was. Then he turned back to his computer and began to operate the virtual buttons on the touch screen. A couple of displays appeared. He stepped aside and switched on the stereo amplifier. To the tech-savvier Rangers' surprise, there was only little noise on the speakers. Either that, or the volume was very low. Back on the PDA, he tapped onto a larger button on the screen, and watching a metronome of sorts, he slightly nodded his head.

In sync with his nodding, a sort of pattern played with a string-like sound came sounding from the speakers. Todd himself played additional lines to this sequence, and after he had gone through the famous theme itself, the program's sequencer launched electronic drums with, partly as a pattern, then again with matching fills, accompanied the fairly old piece of music in a modern yet matching way. The melody, if one could speak of one being present, struck some of the Rangers as known in some way, but as it was usually the case with instrumental music, finding the name proved to be difficult. "Monty," Chip asked, "I've heard this somewhere before. Do you know what it's called?"

"Crikey, Chip, that's the Night on Bald Mountain, composed by Modest Mussorgsky. Ya like it?"

Chip nodded, and apparently, he shared an opinion with his teammates.

The piece ended as abruptly as it was composed to. The orchestral wall of sound fell down within a second. All that was left was the nearly inaudible noise from the stereo speakers and the dark silhouette of the white mouse against the backlight of the touch screen. None of the Rangers dared say a word or make a noise for a short while. The silence was finally ended by a frantic applause.

Flattered by the audience's reactions on his solo performance, much of which was actually played by a multi-track sequencer rather than his own hands, Todd turned, bowed, and said, "Thanks for listening, Rescue Rangers, and for the applause. But I think we'd better leave again, there's a lot to do before I'll have to go to the rehearsals, and I'm getting hungry."

He hoped he could get the plans to be changed by giving hints for the second-next item on the list, lunch. It didn't work, though. "Alright," Chip said, "let's go and meet... what was her name?"

"Melissa..." Todd knew he had no chance against the Rescue Rangers.

"Right. Shall we help you with your computer?"

Before Todd was able to respond, Chip and Dale heaved the wooden stand with the handheld device on it up despite its wheels and headed for the entrance door, and quickly, the others went after them. Todd followed the Rangers on their way out, shutting the door behind him.

He wondered how they were going to transport the PDA and the stand to the palace. He watched Chip tie both components together with a long rope which in human scale would be a piece of thread, but that didn't give him any idea either. 'It's too large to fit into either of their aircraft. So how...'

"'ey mate," Monty who was winding up the Rangerplane's clockwork drive interrupted him. "Get on board, we're takin' off soon!"

"But my PDA..."

"Don't worry, pally, we'll take care o' yer 'igh-tech toy as soon as yer aboard."

Todd shrugged and climbed into the Rangerplane. The seats in the back were already taken by Dale and Foxglove, and the pilot's seat had to be Monty's, so he sat down on the right front seat.

"'ere I come," Monty shouted as he entered the Rangerplane, making the whole craft shake, and with the words, "An' 'ere we go," he unlocked the clockwork. The airship-like vehicle took off from the ground, and, to Todd's amazement, Monty steered it to the PDA and placed the suction cups on the ends of the landing gear onto the computer's screen. Soon, the small electronic device was airborne. Looking back past the tail fin, Todd watched the Rangerplane take off and follow.

"So, mate, where does that lass live?"

Todd was well aware that there was no way back now, and neither was there a way around. "First, we need to fly back to the Strip," he began to explain the way to Melissa.