Chapter 23: Substitution

T-0 days, 0 hours, 37 minutes and 0 seconds (June 12, 11:23 PM EDT).

It was nearing midnight on the evening of Friday, June 12th. In homes across America, high school students were winding down from their graduation ceremonies and parties.

Miss Weir often wondered what her high school graduation was like. She wondered if she ever dated somebody like Lou, because they seemed to act like friendly exes whenever they got together.

Miss Weir closed her eyes and guessed. "So, is it a super-weapon for destroying an entire planet with just one shot?"

Lou smiled. "No, but I saw the movie."

Lou was standing outside the double doors of a bunker less than a mile from Gogol mansion that led deep underground. The bunker had been excavated within the last week from an abandoned bat cave that was said by the locals to be an entrance to the Underworld. Two guards had stood at the door ever since, refusing entry to any "unauthorized personnel." And Laurel Weir was near the top of the unauthorized personnel list.

Lou was currently alone, as the call of Nature had temporarily claimed Bud. This was Miss Weir's best chance of getting inside.

"Aw, come on, you can tell me. We're friends, remember?"

"Well, yeah," Lou replied, "but...it's a secret! I could get in an awful lot of trouble!"

"And who do you think can keep a secret better than me? You know, I still haven't told anyone about that, ahem, questionable collection of you-know-what fan pictures you keep on your computer."

"Shhh...not even Bud knows I collect Harvey the Wonder Hamster, and he knows stuff I never knew I knew!"

"Exactly my point. I'm good at keeping quiet, so you can tell me what Nimnul is up to without having to worry about him tracing any leaks to you! Plus, if you let me see, I'll take you up with me the next time I get access to the company jet."

"I've always wanted to fly. What does it look like above the clouds?"

"More beautiful than anything on this gray earth. What do you say?"

Lou appeared to be deep in thought. It looked painful. "Alright," he said finally, "I'll tell you."

"Tell her what?" asked Bud, who had just turned the corner.

Lou nearly jumped out of his pants. "B...b...bud! What a pleasant surprise!"

Bud got in Lou's face. "Alright, out with it, squirt. What were you going to tell her?"

"I was just telling her...just telling her...my recipe for almond cookies!"

Bud looked hurt. "You never told me your recipe for almond cookies!"

Lou was now doubly on the spot, as he didn't have a recipe for almond cookies.


Just then, the doors burst open and Francine emerged. She was wearing a white lab coat with welder's goggles matching Nimnul's perched on her forehead. She bounced off of Bud and landed on Lou before righting herself. "Boys!" she cried jovially. "I need you to take me to a pilot! Immediately!"

Bud smiled. "How much will you pay me for even faster than immediately?"

"One hundred dollars!" Francine proclaimed.

"Done!" Bud cried, shaking Francine by the hand. He then stepped aside to reveal Miss Weir.

"I just stepped right into that one, didn't I?" laughed Francine.

"Sorry Boss, I'm afraid you did. But I was here the whole time, so I don't think Bud deserves that money."

"Nonsense!" insisted Francine. "A deal's a deal!" She reached into a pocket of the lab coat, extracted a hundred dollar bill, and slapped it into Bud's outstretched hand.

As she and Miss Weir walked towards the helicopter, Francine told her, "You don't know how badly these two are paid, especially with all of the infractions on their record. They earned that money. Come on, we need to be in the air an hour ago."

"So, where are we going?" Miss Weir asked as they climbed into the aircraft.

"Hartford. I need to borrow something from the neighbors."

"The Empress needing to borrow something from the neighbors. This I've got to see!" said Miss Weir as she buckled her safety belt.


The copter set down in the middle of the court, facing the Nulton house. "Keep the engine running!" Francine shouted from the open door. "This won't be a second!"

She ducked under the blades and ran to the door of the d'Foote home, a wooden box under one arm. After several poundings at the door, the lights in the windows went on and she was let in by a groggy Herbert, Sr.

Miss Weir noted that the time was 12:04 am.

At 12:07, Francine came running out at top speed, with Herbert, Jr., and his entire family at her heels. "Go, go, go, go, go!" she shouted as soon as she had set foot inside the copter.

The helicopter lifted up in to the air. Francine looked down at the family, who were shouting and cursing at her. She turned to a questioning Miss Weir and declared, "At some point in life you get to the age when explaining yourself is a big fat waste of time. You just do what needs to be done, and deal with the consequences later."

Once the helicopter was in the air and headed back towards Gogol, Miss Weir cast a glance at her employer and at her box, which was jerking randomly around in her arms. "I take it they weren't too happy with your request?" she smirked.

Francine smiled. "Well, if I weren't the Empress, you would have been accessory to a theft just now."

"Why'd you take it, anyway?"

"If I were to waste my time being defensive, I'd say that the d'Footes had no right to this animal. It's on the endangered species list. It needs to be in a zoo, or in a habitat among its own kind. Since I'm not being defensive, I had a need for this particular bat, at this particular time."

"And what's this have to do with whatever Nimnul's up to in that bunker?"

"It's the cherry atop the Nimnul sundae. Or completely unnecessary. Not sure which. Do you mind if I call you 'Insurance', bat?" It was entirely possible that Francine was drunk.

Miss Weir smiled. "You're trying to make Nimnul shoot himself in the foot, aren't you?"

Francine sprouted an identical smile. "And it's not a crime if I'm the one selling him the bullets."

"Of course not. It's his fault if he doesn't read the friggin' manual."

The laugh left Francine's face. "But that's the problem," she told Miss Weir. "Norton Nimnul's the only person in the whole world with the manual, and he's reading it upside down!"

"Isn't that worse for him than not reading it at all?"

"Precisely, my dear Laurel, precisely! I know...I know a little now. Enough to be dangerous, I thought. Enough to take him on, I thought." Francine pulled her legs up on the seat so she was facing Laurel. "Do you know I spent seven hours in the 'Thirteenth Room' yesterday?" she confided. "Just me, the Book of Asteroth, and an old chair. Chipendale, I realized after the fact. Kinda appropriate, don't you think? Seven hours of Substitutiary Locomotion until my throat was sore. And the chair refused to budge! Refused! How dare it? Doesn't it know who's its master?"

Miss Weir tried to avoid eye contact. She remembered the week she was hired by Francine, there was a vast bonfire in the backyard. Hundreds of old books and parchments burning in strange colors with loud popping noises that kept her up all night. A departing servant warned her to beware of the evils of witchcraft. At the time, she had dismissed this as the ravings of an overworked mind. "Um...Boss?" she asked cautiously.

"It was never the books. All this time, all that money, all those charlatans, and it was never the books or the spells. It was me, Laurel, me all the time! I'm the reason my life has gone so badly, and no spell in the world will ever make things right until I truly want it to go right. Right...should have taken that right turn at Albuquerque."

"Boss, how long has it been since you slept last?"

"No time, no time! The clocks will not stop when you bop them on the snoot! Wait, that didn't rhyme!"

"You really should get some sleep."

"Just...just let me deliver this bat! This cute little pink bat. Thompson swings her...and THWACK! Into the left field stands! The Giants win the Pennant! The Giants win the Pennant! The..." And at that moment she fell asleep.

Miss Weir landed the helicopter on the pad outside Gogol and tried to wake Francine, but to no avail.

Gently taking the box, she walked purposefully to the bunker, where she found Bud and Lou sharing a bottle of champagne.

"Hey boys!" she greeted them. "The Empress is out like a light, and I need to deliver this package to Nimnul."

"Go right in," slurred Bud, "The cat's out of the bag now!"

Without waiting to see if either of the guards would come to their senses and stop her, Laurel slipped inside. Just inside the door was a large platform with a railing that could be swung aside if you wanted to jump down to the ground level, assuming that you could survive the fifty-foot drop. Laurel elected to use the stairs instead to reach the lower level, which opened out into a large natural cave. Various pieces of equipment lined the walls of the cavern. A forty-inch plasma screen television mounted on one wall was playing sports highlights for the week. Sitting in front of the television were the rest of the guards, who were well on their way to a level of intoxication usually only found on Saturday night leave.

Miss Weir was expecting anything other than what she actually found in the center of the cavern, for it looked like it belonged in a carnival midway. A long sloped track led from one side to the other, with a small cart on top, the perfect size to put a four-year-old in. It would not be a very pleasant ride for the tyke, however, because at the end of the track was a brick wall. Only, it didn't really look like brick right now. The red shifted and shimmered into silver and back in a slow, steady rhythm.

Nimnul was next to the wall. He had somehow found a way to pilot his hover-pod into dancing an Irish jig. A set of electrodes were on his head, attached through a box-shaped device to more electrodes connected to several animals kept in a wire mesh cage on a table . "Free! Free! At last my mind is free!" he sang.

"Emperor!" called Miss Weir as she approached him. "The empress sent me something for you!"

Nimnul stopped singing and scowled. "Took her long enough!" he said, removing the electrodes from his bald scalp. "Tell her she missed out on all the fun."

"She fell asleep in the helicopter on the way back. I couldn't wake her."

Nimnul shook his head. "That woman mystifies me," he stated. The emperor met Miss Weir at the half-way point of the track and took the box from her, sliding a wooden panel aside and holding the box up to his goggles. "Hmm...ah, yes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the entire reason she goaded me into this little demonstration was just so she could put the 'whammy' on her counterpart's arch-nemesis. Well, I'll show her, I'll do the swap when she isn't even here! I'll just put this in the..." Nimnul realized that the cart was way down at the other end of the track. "WILL SOMEBODY GET THAT CART OVER HERE!" he shouted.

A couple of men dressed in lab coats raced up. Since the disappearance of The Company, Nimnul had been forced to form a new group to guard him and do the things he liked to delegate. They were called the Nimnul Security Agency. "What can we do for Science!" they shouted in unison.

Nimnul floated over to them, raised himself so he was towering over them, and pointed down the track. "Do you see that cart over there?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"And you see that it isn't over here?"

"Sir! Yes, sir!"

"Well, bring it over here!"

"We hear and obey!" They ran down the track and tried to pick up the cart.

"No! You'll break it! Slide it down here! Slide!"

"Oohhh."

"When did I get the cat's henchmen?" Nimnul asked himself.

"A bit dim, aren't they?" Miss Weir observed.

Nimnul turned his head sharply and finally noticed whom he was talking to. He was especially annoyed by the fact that Laurel was irresistibly drawn to the reflective surface of the hover-pod, so she spent more time looking at it than at his face. "Hey! When did I give you permission to enter my sight?"

"I had to make the Boss's delivery for her." She shook her head. "I really don't understand her at times."

"Well, you'll have to explain her to me during the times when you do." Nimnul turned to the guards. "Finally! I could have been on 'It's a Small World' three times while you were bringing that cart up here. Ooo! I just thought of another punishment for my political enemies! Who here has a notebook?"

As he was saying this, he put the wooden box down on the cart, which immediately started to roll downhill. "I usually have one in one of the compartments of this thing, but wouldn't you know it, I had to make room for that pack of cards..."

Everybody started checking their pockets. "What's this doing here?" Nimnul asked, producing a pack of cigarettes. Realizing what was in his hand, he dropped it with a shudder. "Alright, fine, forget it, folks! I'll just rely on one of you to remember. A lost cause, as we all know..."

One of the guards clapped his hands. "Yay! I love rollercoasters!"

"What are you babbling about now...the cart!" Nimnul raced down the side of the track, trying desperately to outrace the accelerating cart. With a last desperate lunge, he managed to slap a large green button mounted next to the brick wall just before the cart hit, and the wall turned fully silver. When the cart reached the end of the track, a slide on top extended, which the box traveled down until it hit the wall. If this were a brick wall, the box would be fairly broken up by the impact, but instead it bounced gently away from the wall along the slide, sliding and bouncing a few more times before coming to a stop.

Nimnul pressed a red button below the first, which caused the wall to go back to "standby" mode, and gently removed the box, putting it beside the wire cage.

"There, we're done for the night. I don't care if that's actually Foxglove or not, I'm going to bed. Somebody cut the power on the way out!" Nimnul stacked the cage and the box on the edge of the hover-pod, floated up fifty feet, and opened the platform railing to exit the bunker.

THUNK! went the lights.

"Why am I always in the dark?" asked Miss Weir.


"Here's a summary of the news at the top of the hour: Africa suffers from an outbreak of Dengue fever, Moscow remains submerged after yesterday's torrential flooding, Britain continues to endure its year-long heat wave, Michigan has supplanted New Jersey as America's most depopulated state, and Japan is gripped by hysteria as thousands claim to have witnessed a new 'Goddess of the Wired' saving the nation from the Phantoma attacks. Emperor Norton promises to have all of these problems cleared up within the next week, with the exception of Japan-'I can't cure crazy,' he is quoted as saying.

"All hail Emperor Norton, the great and powerful." The announcer looked less than enthused by this last statement. Watching the broadcast, Nimnul made a mental note to have that corrected within the next week as well. He looked over at Francine to judge her reaction, but she kept her face studiously blank.

Nimnul and Francine weren't the only individuals watching the news broadcast from the comfort of their separate beds. The wire cage with two chipmunks, two mice and a turtle had been given a permanent place in the master bedroom of Gogol a week ago, with the bat from the box added to complete the group . The cage faced the television set, and Nimnul made sure the set was tuned to the more depressing of the news channels when he didn't have anything in particular to watch, just so the Rangers would know what they were up against. A big sign was installed above the cage, which said "THE RESCUE RANGERS. No touching."

Nimnul's grim enjoyment of the new program was interrupted when a small woman's choir arrived outside the bedroom window to serenade the Emperor. While he was thus distracted, Laurel entered the room, disguised as a maid. In the midst of her dusting, she managed to "accidentally" open the cage door.

Francine walked up to her. She looked at the cage door, then looked at Laurel, and then shook her head in disapproval. Then she turned the cage around so that Nimnul could not easily see the open door and nodded conspiratorially.


The two women snuck out of the room and went to Miss Weir's room. Francine took a moment to take in Laurel's costume, a frilly pink outfit that looked like it belonged on a three-year old. "Where did you even find one of the old uniforms?" she asked. "I thought I had the lot of them ceremoniously burned the day I inherited the mansion."

"You missed Nimnul's re-orientation meeting for the servants. He discovered your father's designs for 'company dress', and apparently thought they were a better idea than the more-sensible dress code you had in place."

"I'm not surprised," said Francine. "Nimnul and my father have in common the same reaction to status: suck up to your superiors, and humiliate your inferiors at every opportunity. Now, with that cleared up, why don't you show me this pet of yours?"

"He's over here," said Miss Weir. "Meet Sparky. Sparky, wave hello to Francine."

Francine waited a moment, then waved her hand frantically.

Miss Weir was shocked. "You saw Sparky wave? I didn't think any human could see that!"

Francine smiled. "I saw no such thing, Laurel, but if I did, I wouldn't be surprised. That pillow over there could wave at me right now and I would not be surprised, not anymore."

"Does your new attitude have anything to do with that book you read on the Moon-Earth shuttle?" asked Miss Weir.

"Laurel, let me tell you about Waldo."

"You better not be referring to me, ladies," said Nimnul, who was hovering in the doorway. He was not in the best of moods, to put it lightly.

"Norton!" Francine said, turning around suddenly. "What brings you here?"

"Oh, just looking for my darling 'wife', the one who hired that band of fake opera singers."

"Um, happy birthday?"

Nimnul sighed. "Come on," he ordered. "We are going to finish this farce, once and for all." He grimly led them back to the bedroom.

The cage was just as they had left it. The door was wide open, and none of the animals inside had left.

"Come on!" urged Nimnul them. "Make your grand bid for freedom!"

One of the mice sniffed in his general direction.

"So that device you showed me before was your 'Dimensional Switcher'?" Miss Weir leaned over and looked closely at the inhabitants of the cage. "No, that's not really the Rescue Rangers," she declared.

"Sure it is!" countered a manic Nimnul. Pointing at each of the animals in turn, he introduced them. "This is Chip, this is Dale...no, wait, this is Dale and this is Chip. That's Monty, and the particularly stupid-looking one is Gadget. The turtle is that blasted fly of theirs-trust me on this, alternate universes are not an exact science, and sometimes species get a little mixed up. The bat of course you met earlier, Foxglove."

"Forgive me for being skeptical," said Miss Weir, "but they're not acting anything like their characters on the show."

"Ah, now we are getting to the fun part," said Nimnul, an evil glint in his goggles. "You see, once you arrive in this universe, you are bound by its laws. This is a universe of super science and proper respect for human minds, which is why I chose to move here. It is not, and never has been, a universe for nosy vermin that don't know when to leave a hard-working scientist alone! No other animals are sentient here, so neither are the Rescue Rangers. Oh, they're here, all right-see, just now, that glimmer in Chip's eye? That's his intelligence, intelligence trapped in bodies that will not obey them."

He turned to the Empress. "I really have to thank you, Francine, for the excellent idea of bringing the Rescue Rangers here, to this universe. Now I have the satisfaction that not only will they never bother me again, they will never bother anyone again for as long as they live!" He reached into the cage and pulled out the two chipmunks. They screamed and squirmed in his hands. "They are completely ruled by their hormones. Any desire to be heroic is overridden!"

Francine and Laurel's hopes slumped.

Nimnul returned the animals to the cage and triumphantly shut the door. The vibration shook the water bottles, and in a Pavlovian response, this made the animals thirsty, so they started fighting each other for access. Seeing this, Nimnul started laughing. "Don't you realize what this means?" he crowed. "I've won! I've finally, utterly won!

"NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!"


End Part Two