Chapter 19: Choosing Sides

T-34 days, 17 hours, 54 minutes and 47 seconds (May 9, 6:05 PM OMSST).

Eleven hours later, Jay Cummins emerged from a plain private airplane at a small airport located next to the Vostaach Space Center in central Russia. He was escorted by a man in black to a table at the back of an almost-empty cafe. Although the cafe looked run down, this table had been cleaned and polished so thoroughly it looked brand new.

"Delivering Mr. Cummins into your custody, Empress," the agent addressed a large cardboard box that was atop the table.

"Thank you, Agent," Francine replied from behind the box. She transferred it to the floor so she could be seen. "I hope I don't have to fill out any forms to receive him?"

"No, Empress. Mr. Klaudaine filed the 1115S on your behalf."

"Ah, good." She spent a moment studying the agent, an intense-looking young man with swept back brown hair. Behind the intensity she detected sparks of wonder and curiosity, traits she once possessed and treasured. "Tell me your name, Agent," she asked him, with a trace of a smile.

"Agent Keigh, Empress, Reynard Delano Keigh."

"And you were assigned this job by Mr. Klaudaine..."

"I volunteered, Your Excellency," Agent Keigh gently interrupted.

"And why did you volunteer?"

"For a chance to get off-world," he replied, softening. "I've always been fascinated by the mysteries of outer space."

"Ah. Will this be your first time leaving Earth?"

"Yes."

"The same with me," said Francine.

Francine noted the other man watching their conversation, which caused her to recall the circumstances that brought her here. Sitting up straight, she addressed the agent with steel in her voice. "Get some seats reserved for us, Agent Keigh," she said. "I assume The Company has some suitable aliases for us to use on this occasion." Standing, she picked up the box.

"Your Excellency," Cummins said, bowing, as the agent walked passed him.

Francine shrugged. "You can call me whatever you want. I don't care anymore. I'd like to thank you for volunteering to help me save the world, Mr. Cummins. I'm not sure what I would have done if you had refused, as you are essential to my plan. There's a rocket waiting for us, so we should board immediately. I don't suppose you've ever been exposed to space flight?"

"As a matter of fact, I was chief janitor for Space Dock Centauri in 1984. I've been getting in a few flights every five years or so since then."

"Really?" asked Francine, curious. "I didn't see any mention of that in your official biography."

"Well, I didn't want to brag or anything, so I just grouped it in the 'odd jobs' category."

"A very 'odd job', indeed! Well, good, that means you won't have to take the drug cocktail the casual passengers have to take. It would be a boring trip if my flight companion was semi-conscious the entire time."


A few minutes later, the empress and her party boarded the small transport rocket. For once the rocket was nearly full, the majority of passengers being non-essential crew members of Moonbase Alpha that had managed to escape to Earth during the early moments of the Danaan invasion. Francine and the voice actor were sitting in adjoining seats at the back of the passenger compartment. Agent Keigh and the cardboard box took the seats in front of them, and the aisle was fairly wide, allowing the two of them a moderate degree of privacy. From time to time the agent would glance over his shoulder at them.

"You know," Francine told the agent with a smile, "we're not going to disappear if you're not looking at us."

"Did you...um, yes, Empress," Agent Keigh replied sheepishly, before turning around and grabbing an in-flight magazine to hide behind.

"I...I don't mean to pry," Cummins said to Francine in a low voice, "but about this mission to stop Harold Largess: could you tell me a bit more about the man? All I've ever heard about him was the fact that he runs Orlac's Machines with his wife, your sister, and that he gives a large percentage of his earnings to various charities."

Francine Orlac Norton grinned darkly. "Harold tried courting me originally. He switched his attentions to Dinah when he realized I would not allow him to exploit the company to further his own criminal schemes. I didn't know it then, but Harold was the North American head of T.H.E.M. Perhaps you've heard of them, they nearly enslaved the planet a couple of times?"

Cummins nodded, his eyes wide.

"Of course nobody was able to find enough evidence to convict Harold, even after the collapse of T.H.E.M. By this time he had married Dinah, who was fully complicit in his crimes. In fact, I have strong suspicions that the T.H.E.M. agent known as 'The Grimemaster' was in fact my sister-she always had a way with dirt." Francine spoke this last word like it was a curse word for her.

"These two now have possession of the unconscious body of the emperor, and are even now in the midst of masquerading this body as a puppet that they control. We must not allow this to happen. The first thing Harold Largess did when he moved to the Moon was order the Research and Development arm of Orlac's Machines to come up with a way for sharks to swim on the Moon. He keeps a pool full of sharks on the Moon, into which he throws anyone that displeases him. When he runs out of people that displease him, he just chucks somebody at random. Can you imagine what he would do with absolute control of Earth?"

Cummins shook his head, once again stunned into silence.

Francine sighed. "We have a long flight ahead of us, and I'd rather not dwell on such unpleasant subjects. Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"What is it?"

"Where do you get all your voices from? I ask because there was a character you voiced several years ago, Darkwing Duck, with a voice identical to someone I met once."

"I remember that character," Cummins answered. "I just...invented it. I wasn't trying to mimic anyone."

"Are you sure? The match was unmistakable."

"No, I swear I came up with the voice myself. It's a funny thing: you're not the first person to ask me about that sort of coincidence. It seems to be one of the odd quirks of the voice acting business, exactly mimicking people we've never met before, and none of us have ever been able to come up with an explanation."

Jay Cummins was not quite telling the truth with that last statement. It would be more correct to say that there were no sane voice actors who had ever come up with an explanation.

Just then a voice came over the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen," the voice drawled in an Australian accent. "This is your captain speaking. We have just received clearance to take off, so I will be turning on the seatbelt sign. As soon as the stewardesses have confirmed that everyone is strapped in, we will be ready to begin our flight."

Cummins chuckled. "Well, I feel a lot better about our trip."

"Why's that?" asked Francine.

"You don't recognize the voice? That's Alan Carter himself as our pilot!"

"Alan Carter? The name sounds familiar..."

"That man is the greatest pilot in the solar system, taught me everything I know about surviving in space."

"Wait, I remember, he was the third person to set foot on Mars, wasn't he?"

"That's right."

"But that voice..."

"Yes, that voice. He always had a flair for the dramatic, Alan had, so he took my advice to take a few side jobs in voiceover work."

"Ah, of course! He narrated the Jurassic Park trailer."

"And Free Willy, Last Action Hero, Stargate, Richard III, and ..."

"It is morning," said the voice of Captain Alan Carter over the intercom. "You wake up, you board a shuttle. And although it seems an ordinary day, it isn't, for one extraordinary reason: you're going to Moonbase Alpha." The passengers cheered in response.

"...Independence Day. The guy's a genuine hero, but also a bit of a ham, I'm afraid."


Captain Carter kept the crowd entertained with stories and jokes about the Moon and lunar exploration (including the old chestnut with the punchline "training: it makes the job look easy") for the entire trip up to Space Dock Centauri and, after transfer to another ship, for the shorter journey to Moonbase Alpha itself. It was an extraordinary, if unusual, display of stamina. He ended the flight seemingly as energized as he began it, by switching to an American accent to parody his most famous voice-over line: "I welcome you to the Moon, an adventure 4.5 billion years in the making!"


Francine forbade Cummins to talk with Carter during or after the flight, as the success of her plan depended on speed and a reasonable degree of secrecy. As soon as the door of the shuttle opened, Francine and her party rushed out. They barely noticed ex-Commander Gorski passing them in chains, being escorted into the departing shuttle by two MPs.

Consulting a color-coded map of the uncompleted station, Francine and her companions boarded a travel tube, a squat cylindrical object used to commute between the far-flung sections of Moonbase Alpha, and made their way to Orlac Lunar Hospital. During the trip, Francine could feel occasional vibrations-the effect of ongoing construction in the airless vacuum of the lunar surface. Construction that had been continuing at an advanced pace, because that had been Emperor Norton's last order before the battle began. The casualty rate among the workers (or, to remove the euphemism, prisoners) must be immense.

Entering the hospital, they bypassed the front desk and entered an elevator. Without hesitation, Francine pushed the button for the fifth floor. "My next-door neighbor is a wiz at the Wired," she explained to Cummins. "Found out what room Nimnul is being kept in without triggering any alerts. He's also the one to get me some good screenshots of this baby, so I'd get the paint job right," she said, patting the box being carried by Agent Keigh.

Exiting the elevator, the group made their way down deserted hallways to Room 586. Francine peered in the door's window to make sure that the room was occupied, although with the lights turned down it was impossible to be sure by whom. Checking a notepad, she then turned left and led Cummins and Keigh to a storage closet. Giving the box to Francine, Keigh removed a device shaped like a brick and by pointing it at the door and pressing a few buttons, got it to unlock. The three hurried inside.

Putting down the box, Francine opened it to remove a large object that looked like a hairdryer from a 1950's salon, decorated with any number of wires and microchips. Flicking a switch caused several lights on the device to start flashing slowly, accompanied by a low "woop, woop" sound. Turning back to the box she pulled out a pair of headsets. She examined the pair until she determined which one worked as it was supposed to and gave that set to Cummins, putting on the other set herself. "You will hear everything said within Nimnul's room, thanks to this," she said, pointing at the strange helmet. "When I press the talk button on my dummy unit, it will turn on this light on your headset. As long as that light is on, repeat everything I say, but in Nimnul's voice. I trust you can figure the rest out on your own."

"What does that thing do, anyway?" asked Cummins.

"You're looking at everything it does. Other than the microphone and speaker, it's an empty shell. After all, I only had ten hours and one of my husband's drawings, and I'm no mad scientist. No, the success of this plan depends on Norton Nimnul, and how well I can trick him into snapping a twig or two ."

"Good luck, Empress," said Agent Keigh, somewhat mystified .

"Now remember agent, if anything goes wrong, you know what to do."

The agent pursed his lips and glanced at Cummins , but said nothing.


Carrying the helmet under one arm, Francine exited the closet and entered Room 586, then approached the bed. Turning on the light, she saw that the patient was indeed Norton Nimnul. The parts of him that weren't bandaged looked awful. A machine in the corner was attached to him by wires and a thick tube that ended at his mouth. Bellows on the machine inflated and deflated with audible wheezing sounds. Another machine was wired to his chest and by its beeping appeared to control Nimnul's heart. Francine quickly examined the displays on both machines. This done, she carefully lifted up his head and put on the helmet. She started fumbling with the controls of her headset when the door suddenly opened to admit Harold and Dinah Largess, accompanied by two men dressed as orderlies. Their laser rifles belied their dress, however. The group had been summoned by a silent alarm connected to the door.

"A family reunion!" squealed Dinah Largess in a very unpleasant voice, "and you didn't invite us."

"Hello, Dean," hissed Francine, refusing to turn around.

"Don't call me Dean!" barked Dinah. "You never get my name right! Never, never, never!"

"She's just pushing your buttons, babe," soothed Harold, in a voice remarkably like Rob Polson's. Harold was, if possible, even oilier in person than on his ads. "So, what brings you to the Moon on this bright and airless day, a-heh! a-heh! a-heh!" His laugh rivaled Dinah's voice for noxiousness.

Francine finally turned to face her captors. "I came to get you two out of trouble, for once," she said.

"Oh!" exclaimed Harold sarcastically, "we're the ones in trouble! However will you save us?"

"You know what?" retorted Francine, "You gloat too much. Every idiot on Earth could tell what you were really up to with the emperor here."

"You know," Dinah said nasally, "my sister's got a point. Even Frankie could figure out our plan."

"Don't call me Frankie!"

"Hah! How's it feel now, with the slipper on the other shoe, huh?"

Francine rolled her eyes. "How you two idiots managed to steal Orlac's Machines from me, I'll never know."

"These 'two idiots', as you so grandoelequan...oquen...so nicely put it," replied Harold, "stole your company because we were willing to cheat! The only thing that made defeating you a challenge last time was your namby-pamby lawyer boyfriend, and oops, I'm sorry, he's not here for this round!"

"YOU LEAVE DOUGLAS OUT OF THIS!"

"I think you touched a nerve," commented Dinah caustically.

"Well, that piece of paper I bought does say I'm a surgeon," replied Harold. "Ah, dear old Douglas. My sharks were very fond of him."

"That was you?" asked Francine in horror, as the emotional wound of losing the love of her life was viciously ripped open again. Her rational mind was nearly overwhelmed with grief and helplessness, but as she had been forced to do so many times before, she transformed her despair into rage, and then buried that under the cool facade that everyone else thought was the true Francine Nulton . "Un, unfortunately for me, I have no room for sentiment at the present moment," she said, once again in character.

Harold cast a sideways glance at the orderlies' rifles. "Indeed."

Francine looked down at her shoes. "I...I burnt too many bridges as Empress. If I had stayed down there while you took over the Emperor, I'd be finished. So I'm throwing in my lot with you two."

Dinah snorted through her nose, thereby revealing that her laugh was even worse than her husband's. "That's rich! Give us one good reason to keep you out of the shark tank!"

"This!" Francine exclaimed, gesturing at the helmet on Nimnul's head.

"That thing?" exclaimed Harold. "It looks like the sort of toy I'd give our daughter, if we had a daughter."

"If we had a daughter, you'd spoil her rotten," said Dinah. "You'd probably name her something like 'Shnookums', or 'Buffy'."

"Ah, you know me too well, my little mud pie."

"Do you want to know what it is, or don't you?"

"Very well: what is it?"

"It's a reproduction of the Nimnul Thinkomatic 5000. Copied from a prop on the show, so nobody will suspect Nimnul didn't build it."

"What does it do?"

"Watch, or rather, listen!" Francine said, pressing the "talk" button on her dummy headset. "People of Earth," she said into the microphone in a near-whisper. Her voice was drowned out by the same words emerging from Nimnul's helmet, in Nimnul's own voice. "You will each deposit one-tenth of your paychecks each week in the bank account of Mister Harold Largess. Consider it a Largess Tax. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

The perfect Nimnul laugh was the clincher for Harold and Dinah, who rushed over to examine the helmet. "This is perfect!" Harold exclaimed.

"Even better than your brilliant plan, O Wise One?" sneered Francine after releasing the button on her controller.


Inside the storage closet, Agent Keigh was stewing. "You know," he told Cummins, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say that was no act on the Empress' part!"

"She's really selling out to the Largesses?" asked Cummins in alarm. "Then that means..."

"You've got yourself a new job as the emperor's voice. Permanently."


Dinah tapped a dirty fingernail against once of the lamps on the side of the helmet. "What did this thing do, anyway? On the show, I mean."

"Oh, it was a thinking cap," Francine explained. "Nimnul used it to help come up with new inventions. He called it his 'second brain'."

Nimnul's eyes suddenly shot open.

"He shouldn't be conscious yet!" Harold exclaimed. "Brown, hold him down! Hash, put some more of that knock-out stuff in his veins! Pronto!"

The second orderly addressed put down his rifle and fished a vial and needle from his pocket, then advanced on the bed to join his companion. Just before he inserted the needle, he was stopped by the hand of the patient.

"But that's impossible!" shrieked Dinah. "Dr. Russell told us he was a vegetable below the neck!"

Meanwhile Francine was frantically ripping sensor wires and equipment off of Nimnul's body, including the heart and lung machines that should have been keeping him alive.

With a lurch, Nimnul got up off of his bed and threw Brown off of him. "Traitors!" he screamed. "Traitors all of you! When I get my hands on you..."

The Largesses and their three toadies made a break for it. "That guy's not human!" exclaimed a fleeing Brown. "Leave us get out of here!" added Hash.

"Let them run!" exclaimed Francine, stepping in front of an advancing Nimnul. "This is the Moon-where are they going to hide?"

"I suppose you're right," said Nimnul, suddenly sagging as the adrenaline wore off. Francine helped him get back into bed. "Thank you for getting my thinking cap to me. How were you able to recreate something so complex?"

"The Internet," Francine lied.