Ch 8 Alexis's in Wonderland
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Who knows who owns Castle? Not me. Rating: M, in parts. Time: After Four of a Kind, in the near future.
Author's note: Sorry for the delay, but I just got my (Expletive deleted.) internet back.
Chapter Eight. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
The three others noticed that Becks and Rodgers came out of the same bedroom the next morning, but no one said a thing. Even as the new couple tried to pretend that nothing had changed, no one said a word. However, when Becks and Rodgers were busy getting their breakfasts, Rick leaned over and whispered in Kate's ear. "Shouldn't we tell them it's okay?"
Kate smiled. "But they're so cute like that. Adorable, if I can use my husband's favorite word."
"My favorite word is Kate and I spent too long loving you from a distance to want to see them doing anything like that."
"I'm sorry, Castle. I was so stupid and I wish…"
"I love you and you never need to apologize to me again. But we should tell them."
"If they ever get more than six inches from each other, you tell Rodgers, and Simone and I will tell Becks." Kate looked over at Simone who grinned and nodded. "Mais oui."
Before anyone could say anything more, Metford walked into the room. "This one should be a snap for you." He said with an unconvincing smile.
"That probably means the next Alexis is hiding in Jurassic Park with an intelligent T rex." Castle muttered.
"Who rides a motorcycle." Rodgers added.
"It's nothing like that." Metford said. "We'll all meet in my office when you're through with breakfast."
The first order of business when they got to Metford's office was the usual clearing out of their old virus instilled knowledge and having a new virus with new information injected into them.
"San Francisco?" Castle said and whistled. "Both Kate and I have been there. Not together, though."
"I was at Stanford." Kate said as Becks nodded.
Castle thought for a second and ran through his new memories. "But not the San Francisco we knew."
Rodgers nodded. "The US Constitution of 1789 was never approved. The US remained under the old Articles of Confederation. That was a loose association of more or less independent states that held onto their sovereignty with a death grip. And when people moved west, they set up new states, some became part of the US and some didn't. So, the US is nothing more than an association of independent states, Congress is just a talking shop that can't do much of anything unless the state legislatures agree, and they never do."
"And San Francisco is a country all of its own." Kate added.
Becks nodded. "Not just the City of SF. San Mateo County, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Contra Costa, Marin and most of Napa and Sonoma counties are part of San Francisco."
"And it's still the Summer of Love." Castle said with a smile.
"Far freaking out." Simone said. "Did I get that right?"
"We need to prepare you for your trip. Come with me." Metford said.
Half an hour later, the five friends stared at each other.
"Psychedelic." Castle said, looking at Kate. Her chestnut hair was a bit lighter, definitely longer and curlier. Her eyes were now green, but otherwise she was the same. She wore hip hugger jeans and a loose peasant blouse.
Turning to Becks, he saw she had also changed. Her hair was long, straight and blonde. Her one eye was dark blue and the other was covered with a bright red patch. She had on skin tight red leather pants and a black tank top. She obviously had no bra on.
Simone now had black hair, blue eyes and wore a long, loose skirt, slit up one side and a low cut blouse.
Rodgers wore faded jeans a black tee with a black leather vest and boots. His hair and beard were longer.
Castle looked at himself in a mirror. "I look like a Beatle." He had a Beatle haircut, a frilly shirt, a green claw hammer coat with tight knee breeches and boots.
"You're a group of traveling musicians. You'll find you can play all of the musical instruments you will carry, and a few more you may run into." Metford informed them.
"That's a problem." Becks spoke up. "I get terrible stage fright. I can't sing in public. At all."
"Me either." Kate added.
"Are you sure?" Metford said slyly. "Try it and see. Simone, you can sing. Start, please. Gentlemen, will you accompany her?"
Simone began.
"Oh, my love, my darling
"I've hungered for your touch
"A long, lonely time
"Time goes by so slowly
"And time can do so much
"Are you still mine?
"I need your love
"I need your love
"God speed your love to me.
Kate and Becks joined in almost at once. The three nearly identical voices were beautiful and all three women were clearly enjoying the song.
Rick and Rodgers clapped heartily when they were done.
"That's what the virus can do? The Kates can sing in public?"
Metford nodded. "And now it's time for you to go.
They were deposited in a patch of woods about twenty miles south of San Francisco. Unlike their own San Francisco, the area was home to small farms and the occasional village. As they walked on what might have been where Highway 101 was, Rodgers, as he always did, went over the information they had on this Earth.
"There are a hundred and seventeen or so separate little nations in what is, more or less, in our time, the United States. Each one is fiercely independent. Like the founding fathers, they are wary of an over mighty government."
"Some of the founding fathers." Castle broke in." Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists wanted a powerful federal government."
"True." Rodgers conceded. "But they didn't get it here. Lacking a continent wide market and states determined to protect their own industries, Henry Ford, or instance, had no chance. Each of the states has their own little automobile industries who produce a limited number of cars. Locally, cars are rich men's toys, as are aircraft. So, we have no Beach Boys songs about cars." He pointed to the east. "Also, there are no bridges across the bay. San Francisco isn't wealthy enough to afford to build any bridges."
They were interrupted by a farm cart containing a young man and a young lady approaching them. "Where are you from and where are you headed for?" The man asked.
"We're from just about everywhere, young fellow, bit were headed for San Francisco." Rodgers said.
"Are you musicians?" the girl asked, excitedly.
"That we are." Said Rick. "We were in Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula."
"The Blue Meanies Town?" Said the man, with distaste.
"They liked our songs well enough." Simone said, smiling. "I'm from Nawlins myself. The Big Easy."
"Mike, let them ride with us. I've never met anyone who's been to New Orleans."
Mike and Alice were farm kids from San Jose and had been sent by their respective parents to take orange juice into San Francisco for some old customers. They had planned to spend the weekend seeing the big city.
The five travelers told stories based on their implanted memories of this Earth, with a bit of exaggeration. After all, travelling musicians were expected to tell lively tall tales.
Soon they came to a barrier in the road. "Diggers." Mike said. "They'll just check to see if you're carrying weapons into the city. No problem."
They were carrying weapons, of course. But nothing the Diggers would recognize as such. San Francisco was as close to a nation run on the principals of classical anarchy as anything. There was no government, just free associations who took care of what would normally be government services. If you wanted your garbage collected, you could hire an association to do so. If you didn't want your garbage picked up, your neighbors would encourage you to have it picked up, but no one would force you to have it picked up. But, if you needed some other service, you might not find people interested in helping you. The Diggers were as close to a government as there was. They resolved problems between associations and people, helped people who might have fallen through the cracks, and generally operated as the helper of last resort.
"How do." Said a muscular young man at the barricade. "Mike. Alice. Who's your friends?"
They were introduced and without any ceremony, they were sent on into San Francisco. They left Mike and Alice on what was still known as Russian Hill and walked to a Victorian looking house. Oddly enough, there was a person here from Earth One, a cultural anthropologist studying the successful use of anarchism.
Rick knocked on the door. It was opened almost at once. "Welcome, strangers. I'm Wavy Gravy."
Castle looked at the man again. "Really?"
The man shook his head. "If the real one was born on this Earth, he never made it to San Francisco. But it's a great name. Come with me."
He led them to the basement and behind a brick wall, they found a large office. "I have some new intel for you. This Alexis has been kidnapped and held by some religious extremists. They're from an oddball Christian sect and call themselves the Army of God. There are four of them, two men and two women. They're fanatics and highly trained in martial arts. I wouldn't be surprised if they had some kind of weapons with them. The Diggers aren't the best police anyone has ever seen."
"Why would a bunch of religious nuts want to kidnap Alexis?" Kate asked.
Wavy Gravy shrugged. "I have no idea. If I had to guess, I'd say that their higher ups told them that God wanted them to do it and that was enough for them. I'd bet that the higher ups aren't as fanatic as the followers."
Rodgers nodded. "So, the big shots get something they need or want from Bracken's people, and the followers get a mission. And then God loves them."
They were interrupted by a phone ringing. Wavy Gravy grabbed it. "I have some people looking for them. This could be important."
It was important. A friend of Wavy Gravy's had spoken to some people who'd rented an apartment to four "very uptight members of the bourgeoisie." They got an address out in the Sunset.
"We may as well go now." Becks said. It's almost dark and by the time we get there, it'll be dark. We can recon the place and make plans."
They found a horse drawn trolley and rode to the western end of San Francisco. There they found a two story apartment building.
"Apartment four." Kate said. "Ready? Got your weapons?" Metford had provided them with rings that functioned like a Taser or a cattle prod. One punch would know anyone down.
They knocked on the door.
No answer.
They knocked again. The door was opened by a muscular, short haired blonde who was wearing only a smile.
"Yo, pretty mama." Castle began. "We heard that we could crash at your pad and…" He stopped. The woman was staring at a point over his shoulder. He waved his hand in front of her face. No response.
"Thanks, we'll be happy to come in." Castle said, pushing past the woman. As they walked into the apartment, they were overwhelmed by the odor of incense and pot. The first man they came across was staring intently at a candle. Castle looked at the pieces of paper in front of him. "Blotting paper. LSD, I'll bet."
"Welcome to the Summer of Love." Becks said.
"Make love not war." Rodgers added sarcastically.
There were a half a dozen more people in the place, none of them in any condition to drool, let alone stop the five.
They found Alexis upstairs, chained to an old fashioned steam heater. She jumped up when she saw Rick. "Father! You found me. And Kate…" A look of horror came over her face. "Oh! You lost the baby?"
"Wrong Alexis." Rick said, then turned to Alexis to explain who and what they were.
"This is an alternate universe?" Alexis asked, not quite believing them.
"Have you been outside?" Kate asked.
Alexis shook her head.
"Come and see what San Francisco looks like now."
Alexis held up her manacled hands. "Dragging a radiator behind me?"
"Be right back." Rick said, going off to search for the manacle keys. He found them in a pile of clothes besides a group of five or six people, none of whom had the slightest interest in him.
Once unchained, Alexis and her rescuers walked out the door and into the San Francisco night.
"This is the easiest one yet." Castle said. "I wish they were all this…Dammit!"
"What is it?" Kate asked.
"I stepped on something and almost fell over."
"Someone." Rodgers said. "You stepped on someone. Someone with a lot of blood on him."
Calls to passersby soon brought a couple of burly Diggers armed with clubs. One bent over the victim. "Dead." He looked up at Castle. "You and your friends'll have to stay here until Doc Davidson gets here.
Hearing the name, Castle grimaced. "Doc Davidson? Tall, dark haired, good looking?"
The Digger nodded. "You know the Doc?"
"Couldn't be the same one." He said hoping it wasn't that Davidson.
Doc Davidson was tall, dark haired and good looking. And she had great legs and big boobs. Her red leather miniskirt and tank top allowed anyone to see that. She knelt down beside the vic. "Multiple stab wounds to the torso and something in his hand." She pried a piece of paper out of the dead man's hand. "Fuck!" She said. "It's the zodiac sign for Leo. It's the zodiac killer."
The two Diggers cursed as well.
"The zodiac killer?" Rick asked.
"Have you all been stoned for the last two months?" Davidson snapped.
"We just got here. From out of town."
"We have a killer who stabs people and leaves drawings of the signs of the zodiac with his victims. He started two months ago with Ares, the Ram and has worked his way to Leo, the Lion." Davidson suddenly looked at them suspiciously. "Where did you say you were from?"
"We came here from Los Angeles." Rick said.
"Can you prove that?"
"No, but we can prove we didn't kill that man." Kate said quickly. "Look at those stab wounds. That many wounds means he bled a lot. We'd have blood all over us."
"Are you a doctor now?" Davidson asked sarcastically.
"I used to work in a hospital in San Antonio de Bexar. I saw a lot of knife wounds."
Davidson inspected them, paying very close attention to Rick.
"Okay, come with me to the Diggers' place so we can get your stories."
And off they went.
Dr. Joyce Davidson dragged Rick into her office to interrogate him first. She seemed to want to do that horizontally with their clothes off. Rick had to keep pushing her away.
"Come on, big boy. It'll be fun."
"I'm married." Rick said, pulling her hands away from his belt.
"No problem. We'll invite your wife to join us. In fact we can invite everyone. I have some dynamite weed, and every kind of medical grade dope you can think of. We'll all get stoned and screw like demented bunnies."
"No!" Rick repeated. "I'm faithful to my wife. I don't sleep with anyone but her."
"Not even with those other hotties who came here with you? Or even tall, dark and hairy out there?" Doc Davidson took a step back. "What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing! Is it so unheard of to love your wife?"
Davidson pulled her top off and tossed it on the floor, then pushed her miniskirt down. "It is here. Why would you come to San Francisco if all you wanted to do was inflict your tired, unhealthy, middle class pig fascist capitalist values on everyone else?"
"I came for the waters." Castle quoted.
"What waters?"
"I was misinformed."
Davidson feinted to her left and grabbed Castle. "As your doctor, I feel an obligation to help you get rid of these unhealthy psychoses. Just relax. You'll enjoy this." Castle saw her reaching for a jar of white powder. He assumed it wasn't sugar. He had no choice. He head butted the doctor and made his getaway.
"We have to get out of here. That woman is as horny as a two peckered mountain goat." He announced.
Doctor Davidson stuck her head out of her office, not bothering to cover her nakedness. "Sunshine, Stony." She said to the two burly Diggers. "These people are witnesses to a crime. They can't leave until I say so. Get more people, I think. Three or four more."
Rodgers stood up. "I'm next." Davidson smiled and Becks glared at him as he walked in the doctor's office. As he did so, he turned around and winked at Becks. As soon as the door closed, they heard several heavy thuds and then a low pitched conversation that sounded like Rodgers was doing all of the talking.
Rodgers came out smiling.
"What happened?" Becks said, not exactly sure how she should feel about her lover.
"I explained that I'd grown up on the Spanish Marches, that's a real bad place about where the border of the US and Mexico are in our world. Here, it's full of Americans, Spaniards, Native Americans, runaway slaves and god knows who else, all raiding each other and killing anything that moved or only appeared to move. I told her I'd been killing since I was sixteen and also told her why we weren't the zodiac killer, which she damned well knew already. I told her that if she came on to any of us, I'd break a few of her bones and then go out and do the same to the Diggers. She believed me."
Joyce Davidson came out of her office, now fully dressed and with a white lab coat over her other clothes. She pointed to Kate. "I'll interview you next."
"With the door open." Kate said.
"Whatever." Davidson shot back.
Kate came out a few minutes later with a smile on her face. She grinned at Rodgers. "She's developing a nice black eye. What did you do to her?"
Rodgers did his best to look puzzled by the question. "Do to her? Me?"
"Forget it." She turned to Rick." And you'll get something special tonight for fighting off Doctor Motorcycle Bitch."
Becks was next into the doctor's lair.
Shortly after she went it, here was a crash from Davidson's office followed by a bellow of pain from her. Then Becks was yelling for help.
"What is it?" Castle said, seeing Becks had Davidson's arm behind her back.
"She wanted to look at my eye, she said. The next thing I knew, she had her hands on my boobs. I hit her and knocked open the cabinet there. Look what's inside."
"Drawings?" Rick said, puzzled.
"Drawings of the signs of the zodiac. Aries through Leo have been used in murders." Becks said. "But here we have Virgo, the maiden, then Libra the Scales, Scorpius the Scorpion, and all the way to Pisces the Fish. They're the same as the one we saw tonight."
The two Diggers stuck their heads in. "What happened?" One asked.
"We solved your serial killer cases for you." Kate said tiredly.
Davidson began screaming. "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the mighty one."
One of the Diggers hit her on the side of her head with a club, silencing her.
That night, back on the Moon, after turning over another not-the-right-Alexis to Metford, Becks and Rodgers relaxed in bed, listening to Kate reward Rick for fighting off Doctor Motorcycle Bitch. Rodgers was running his hand lightly over her taut, muscled stomach.
"I've been thinking." Rodgers began, then stopped.
"About what?"
"When this is done, we'll be sent to somewhere else. Somewhere where you're not in prison for murder and I'm not about to get killed in Africa. And we'll be better. Whole again." He stopped again.
"So?" She asked, becoming curious.
"I'd like us to go to the same place."
"You mean be together?"
"Yes. I'd like that."
For the longest time she said nothing. He was afraid he'd gone too far, too soon.
Finally she spoke. "I'd like that, but…"
"But what?"
"Just because we're like Rick and Kate doesn't mean we'll end up like them. I've talked to Kate. She was pretty hard on Rick. Pushed him away for years. I'm a lot like she was. A loner. Afraid to open up to people. Used to doing things my own way. And, I was sort of in love with Rick Castle once and he dumped me as soon as he got me in bed."
"I'm not Rick Castle. And the one Rick Castle I do know is a good guy. A real good guy."
Becks started to cry. "All of my friends dropped me. They thought I had gone crazy. I had shot the wonderful Senator Bracken, and tried to blame him for my mom's death. Even Mike Royce, one of my best friends…" Becks sobbed so much she couldn't talk for a while. "My dad started drinking again. There's no one now to help him." She looked over at Rodgers. "Are you sure you want to get involved with someone like me?"
"I am involved and I want to be more involved."
Becks rested her head on his naked chest. "Don't say I didn't warn you."