Chapter 22: Victory Speech
T-18 days, 0 hours, 57 minutes and 2 seconds (May 25, 8:03 PM PDT).
In honor of his defeat of the Danaans, Emperor Norton was putting on the biggest party in the history of the world.
No man-made structure was big enough to contain it, so Crater Lake in Oregon was drained at enormous expense and converted into suitable standing room.
After raucous musical concerts given over the course of several days, Emperor Norton finally emerged, to a deafening ovation that lasted twenty-six minutes. Many of the celebrants' hands were bleeding by the time they were finished clapping. They had waited so long to glimpse the one man capable of lifting their spirits and dispelling their permanent state of depression. What they saw was a small man floating in mid air, his eyes encased in a visor and his lower half encased in a gleaming titanium shell that tapered to a point. The upper part of this shell was shaped into a thick ring. Although this certainly wasn't the effect he intended, Norton Nimnul rather resembled an acorn.
"People of the world!" Nimnul cried, his voice carried across the lakebed and to every television and radio in the world. "I greet you tonight as a planet of free people!"
Another ovation, even louder than the first, although thankfully much shorter in duration.
"I, Emperor Norton, have organized the immense effort and requested the immense sacrifice needed to do this! But this is not all I have done. I have solved your energy problems, eliminated starvation with super grains and wiped out disease with nano machines. I have found ways to ease the pains of the elderly with automatic nurses and banish the boredom of the youth with games that are not only entertaining, but educational as well!
"You might think my work here is done. But it is not."
The hundreds of screens mounted around and throughout the lakebed came to life at this point, and began displaying a diagram of the Milky Way galaxy.
"You see before you a video made by the Danaans to train their new recruits. It explains the great mystery of why Earth has been targeted for destruction so many times. See this narrow cloud that remains stationary as the galaxy rotates through it? This band is considered holy ground, forbidden territory by the space-faring races of the galaxy. The origin of this absurd superstition is lost to the dim pre-history of the eldest of these races, but yet they still obey the one unwavering rule: no living creatures are allowed to exist in this cloud. See how these other systems have been targeted!"
The video showed solar system after solar system edging into the cloud as it was dragged by the rotation of the galaxy, only for armadas of spacecraft to arrive each time to blast the life-bearing planets to oblivion or bathe them in sterilizing rays.
"For more than a million years, entering that cloud has been a death sentence. Our Solar System entered that cloud in 1906. History records what followed."
The screens now showed photos of the aftermath of the Tungunska Explosion of 1908, which the Soviet Union had later revealed was the crash-landing of an alien scout ship. This was followed by black and white footage that was part of the childhood education of everyone watching: the Fomorian Invasion of America and then the world, 1938 - 45, the film showing the petrifaction rays sweeping out from the triangular spacecraft. There was some footage of the failed Firbolg invasion of Brazil in 1967, and finally the just-concluded Danaan invasion and the Battle of Clavius.
"We have been extraordinarily lucky," said Nimnul, "because the Galaxy has been embroiled in an immense and multi-sided civil war for the last five thousand years, and only splinter groups of each race have been fanatical enough to sacrifice the possible existence of their own race to attack us. This luck cannot last.
"Therefore, I am preparing the world for a preemptive strike. I have already mastered their technology. Within a year, we will have our first faster-than-light warship. We can build a mighty armada, step out boldly onto the galactic stage, and claim our rightful place. More than our rightful place-for our pains, we demand compensation!
"We demand worlds to settle on. We demand that the species that tried to conquer us must be our slaves! Under my leadership, the Terran Empire will be the greatest empire in the history of the Universe! Are you with me? Do you believe in a future of greatness?"
From thousands of speakers, the syllable "NIM" was intoned in a deep mechanical voice.
The voices of Earth responded: "NUL!"
"NIM!"
"NUL!"
"NIM!"
"NUL!"
Norton Nimnul, the man who had been expelled from MIT for the contents of his doctoral dissertation, the man who had had such dark thoughts the night before Aldrin Klordane had recruited him, the man who was now absolute ruler of the planet, gazed out at the tens of millions of adoring followers, and through the television cameras at hundreds of millions more. It was the greatest moment in his life.
In the corner of his eye he saw Francine, standing in the wings. She alone, alone in the whole world, was not cheering for him. Her arms were crossed and she had a look of contempt in her face. It was the same look on the faces of the Rescue Rangers in his head.
Suddenly, none of the adulation mattered. The only person he wanted to respect him was her.
She turned and strode away, and he raced after her, leaving the crowd in the lurch.
Backstage, Nimnul caught up to Francine and turned her to face him. "What is with you?" he demanded.
"Are you proud of yourself?" she asked him, calmly.
"Yes!" he shouted. "I think I have very good reason to be proud. I have..."
"You have finally proved that you are not a failure," Francine stated firmly. "You. Nobody else. And that is all you have ever tried to do. Yet you still insist on living this lie."
"Lie? This is no lie! What are you talking about?"
"Your grand imposture. Your insistence that you are Norton Nimnul."
"I AM NORTON NIMNUL!" he shouted in her face.
She stood her ground, continuing to stare at him until he faltered. "You are not Norton Nimnul," she repeated firmly. "You are Norris Nulton. You were born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 2nd of 1950. Your father left your family before you were born, and your mother got so tired of tending to your childhood illnesses that she wished you would just give up and die."
"I am..." Nimnul began, feebly.
Francine continued on. "You were one of the most-respected science fiction illustrators in the industry, and your prop designs for the cartoons of Rockwell Studio are the only redeeming factors of the vast majority of garbage they produced.
"Norton Nimnul on the other hand is a sick joke, created out of jealousy by a bitter parody of a studio producer that never understood why you were wasting your talents on his studio.
"You have to let go of him now, Norris," Francine said, pleading, taking his hand in her own. "Nimnul was a millstone around your neck, like the failure of the Alien Detector. But you have redeemed yourself. You have saved humanity from destruction, and brought the world into a new Golden Age. Let go of Norton Nimnul. Let him go so I can have my husband back."
The man before her reared back his head and screamed at the top of his lungs. "WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO CONVINCE YOU, WOMAN? Norris Nulton is gone, dumped into a dead-end waste of a universe! I am Norton Nimnul! I am Norton Nimnul! I have created wonders the world has never known! I have slain the mighty dragon that has kidnapped the fair princess! What more could I possibly do to convince you?"
Francine's brow furled in confusion. "And how did you get here again, Mister so-called Nimnul?"
"I used a machine! A machine to switch my mind with my counterpart's in this universe! The mechanism is absurdly simple!"
"Sure it is," Francine said, turning and walking away.
Nimnul's pod raced in front of her. "I'm not finished! I...I could re-build it. Use it on someone. Then would you be convinced?"
Francine still remained skeptical. "Who would you switch?"
"I could switch anyone in the world! I could switch you!"
Francine inspected her nails. "Yes, I suppose you could. Replace me with some witch who rides a canister vacuum. But why do that, when you could do something really satisfying?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Rescue Rangers. You may have defeated them by coming here and winning the world, but do they know that? Or do they mistake Norris for you? Just think of that weak milksop of a man sobbing in a corner-the Rangers think that he is you."
"No, they can't think that!" Nimnul retorted. "I'm the great Professor Nimnul! I have never admitted weakness!"
"Norris admits weakness," Francine sneered. "He proclaims it from the rooftops. It is why I despise him."
"Wait...no. I can't. Bring my worst enemies here? Ridiculous!"
"They will be completely in your power. You have all of humanity behind you, and no animal has the intellect to help them-pure black and white. I mean, what could they do?"
"Well..."
"Not to mention, if you have the Rangers in your possession, you can reverse the Modemizer mishap. Those dissenting voices in your head will be gone!"
"But it's impossible. To get the Rangers using the Switcher, I would have to use the Rangers' counterparts in this world-wild animals! How can I possibly tell which vermin correspond to the Rangers?"
"You forget," Francine said, tapping the side of Nimnul's head, "a bit of the Rangers are in there. Rig up some sort of tracking device to find the matches to the parts of you that are not really part of you!"
"Yes! Yes, that could work! I'll rebuild the Dimensional Switcher! I'll swap the Rescue Rangers, and then you'll have to believe me!"
Nimnul turned and headed back to the crowd.
"Yes," said Francine, smiling darkly, "then I'll have to believe you."
