Chapter 28: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Earth-A
It was a black sky with stars, and a blazing sun hung just over the horizon. It was morning on the far side of the Moon.
A figure in a spacesuit emerged from a crashed Eagle shuttle and started loping across the barren landscape at top speed, not once looking back.
All Francine could hear was the sound of her own labored breathing in the suit.
Minutes passed in monotonous travel, then a voice cut in on the radio:
"I see you." It was Norton Nimnul's voice. The voice was not addressed to Francine alone. "I see all of you, people of Earth. Here in the limitless reaches of space, I can see Eternity. And compared to that, you are a contemptible lot of vermin."
Francine ignored the voice. All of her attention was focused on the ring of lights ahead that marked the position of Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2. Slowly, far too slowly, it edged closer.
"I have raised you from darkness into light, from ignorance into reason. And yet you resist me. You flaunt my laws, reject my inventions, and spurn my invitation to conquer the universe. In this you are aided and abetted by those I would call my closest friends. Friends like Francine Nulton, who has made a habit of subverting my guiding instructions at every turn."
Francine reached the entrance to the complex. A clumsy glove danced across a keypad. "REJECTED." She tried another code, and another.
"I never asked for much: a little respect, no interference, and your firstborn children to man my army of conquest. Is that so much to ask?"
The door finally opened, and Francine passed into the airlock. She stood there impatiently as the lock cycled, continually checking the chronometer on her arm. It informed her that it was September 13th, 20:39 Lunar Time. She did not bother to remove her suit.
"Well I have taken the only part of Earth worth taking: its technology. And that leaves me free to pronounce sentence."
The lock opened, and Francine rushed forward through seemingly endless corridors at an impossible speed, towards a single flashing green light on a panel in a darkened room at the other end of the control center. Above the panel, through a wall-sized window, lay miles of radioactive waste buried underground. Waste that has been rigged into the biggest bomb Man had ever made.
"For the crime of failing my expectations, the penalty is: Extermination. And 'The Moon' will be the name of your exterminator."
Francine's hand fell down towards the abort button, but was a second too late. The field before her erupted into light, and the window splintered into dust. Francine instantly blacked out.
She awoke in space. By all rights she should have disintegrated, but somehow Nimnul was keeping her alive long enough to witness his revenge on humanity in full. Francine could not move a muscle, could not breathe, could not even will her eyes to close or look away.
She saw the Moon, propelled by the blinding extended explosion on its far side, begin to move, first nearly imperceptibly, then gradually faster and faster, heading for the Earth. She could hear the screams of panic from all of humanity.
But before the Moon could collide with Earth, Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 1 on the Moon went up in a distinctly smaller explosion than NWD Area 2. Since this was on the near side of the Moon instead of on the far side, this explosion served to steer the wayward satellite into a course that took it past the Earth instead of into it. It continued on into deep space, seemingly only a little scorched but otherwise intact.
The result of this course correction on Earth, however, was to change an instant doom into a long, drawn-out one. Immense tidal effects caused massive earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions that overwhelmed the Earth, ironically causing the clouds to clear for the first time in a half-century. Vast cracks in the ocean floor caused the oceans to drain, exposing the lost, and now dead, continent of Atlantis.
And above it all she heard the screams, the groans, the gasps of every living thing on Earth, as she saw its atmosphere turn a deep red in color.
The date was September 13th. And there never would be a September 14th.
With an audible snap, Francine woke up. For a minute she lay still, listening to the sound of her heart. Then she opened her eyes and found herself looking into the impassive green face of Sparky. The mouse's cage had been placed on her nightstand next to her glowing Moon rock. The clock told her it was 2:18 am on the morning of June 26th.
She turned on the light and sat up. Nimnul's bed was empty. Francine noticed that the cage had a false bottom. She pulled it out to discover a tape recorder. She made sure to lock the bedroom door before she hit the "play" button.
The recording began with an electronic voice announcing the date and time the recording was made: yesterday afternoon, while Francine was out dedicating an elementary school. The same voice then continued: "Call for Francine Nulton from Vostaach Space Center."
"Francine's not here," said Nimnul.
"Shall I take a message?" the computerized voice asked.
"No, I'll take the call."
"Mrs. Nulton, this is Doctor Russell."
"You've wasted a trip to Earth, Doctor. There's no way I'll let you get me back into a hospital."
"Emperor Norton...this is an honor. I do wish you'd reconsider. I've finally found the results of the tests performed on you when you were admitted to the hospital and..."
"Those tests were an invasion of my privacy, given without my consent! I demand the results be destroyed immediately!"
"But Your Excellency, the CT scan shows a subarachnoid hemorrhage of the right frontal lobe, accompanied by high ICP! You must undergo surgery to relieve the pressure!"
"I will not have you, or any other doctor, cut me open!"
"Please, Your Excellency! Untreated, your TBI is liable to affect your personality, leading to emotional instability, paranoia, mania and inappropriate rage."
"I think my rage is very appropriate at the moment, considering that you wish to play around with the very gray matter that made me emperor! If you contact me again, I will have you arrested for harassment."
"I'm begging you, Nimnul! Just look in a mirror-if your pupils are still of uneven size, it's a sign of serious damage!"
"End call!"
"Call terminated," replied the electronic voice. "Shall I save this call?"
"No, delete it. No one must ever hear it."
The recording finished, Francine put the tape recorder back in the secret compartment in Sparky's cage. After all, it was the last place that Nimnul would care to look.
Francine heard the sound of excited voices and rapid footsteps walking through the hallway outside the bedroom door, and judging by the brightness of the light under the door crack, every fixture in Gogol was on. Putting on slippers and a robe, she headed to the command center to see what was going on.
The room, although gigantic in size, was so crammed with computers and humans to operate them that there wasn't room to move. Dominating the proceedings was Norton Nimnul. The shell of his hover-pod was now a deep black in color, with silver hemispheres studded over its surface. His goggles were the same colors. He was floating a full ten feet in the air, turning constantly to keep his hidden eyes on the walls. Those walls were covered with Nimnul's plasma screens. Some of them showed news programs, while others showed the views from Nimnul's numerous cameras. All were focused on the Moon. The sound from the screens was muted, but the headline was clear enough: Nimnul's prisoners were free, and they were converging on Moonbase Alpha and demanding independence. One photo appeared over and over in the news coverage, the likely Pulitzer Prize winner of this story. Across the rubble of a collapsed wall, the diminutive form of Alice Wentworth in a yellow spacesuit led an enthusiastic rabble onward. In one hand she gripped a laser rifle, and in the other was the home-made flag of the Loonies: "a black field speckled with stars, a bar sinister in blood, a proud and jaunty cannon over all, and below it the motto: 'TANSTAAFL!'" The photograph was attributed to "J&M B."
The private cameras showed the current stage of the revolt, as the crowd gathered in a corridor in front of the Main Mission area of the moon base. About seven of the large mountaintop lasers were trained on that corridor.
"All lasers locked on target," announced a technician, one of dozens sitting at posts in the large room.
"You can't!" cried Francine, stepping forward. "The only allies you have are in Main Mission, and an attack of that size will kill them as well!"
"I must make an example!" said Nimnul. "Fire!"
The technician pressed a button, and the corridor exploded. The technicians cheered.
"Silence!" yelled a suspicious emperor. "Aim the Number 6 laser at a random patch of ground."
"But..."
"Just do it!"
"Laser aimed."
Nimnul floated down and pressed the button, then frowned as the patch of lunar surface instantly exploded. "We've been duped!" he told them. "These displays are faked-it should take two and a half seconds for anything we do down here to have an effect on the Moon. How come none of you idiots noticed that during the drills?"
"Um, we thought you had increased the speed of light."
"What do you take me for, some kind of miracle worker? Nobody can increase the speed of light!" An arc of electricity shot out of one of the silver domes on the hover-pod, and the technician fell unconscious. Nimnul dived down to take his place, and a rapid series of schematics started appearing on one of the monitors. "Ah, there it is! The source of the false signals. Now let's see what's really going on."
The scenes changed, to show that Nimnul no longer had control of anything on the Moon. The revolutionaries, led by Rescue Ranger fans, had been given control of Moonbase Alpha by a willing public, and the lasers were no longer accessible from Earth. Commander Koenig and his staff had surrendered without a fight, and were currently in detention. And Nimnul's hand-picked representative on the Moon, Reynard D. Keigh, appeared to be the mastermind behind it all.
"Treason! Treason, treason, treason, treason, TREASON!" The hover-pod rotated erratically, as Nimnul's blood-shot eyes dared someone to give him an excuse to try out some more of the pod's armament. Everyone's eyes wandered nervously.
Nimnul returned to the Navi. "It's time to bring out my ace in the hole. The robot army is not finished, but there's more than enough of them to recapture the Moon before it's too late." The screen showed the contents of a large artificial cave containing tens of thousands of humanoid metal figures, with the form of Emperor Freewheel's robot soldiers, and the minds of Emperor Nimnul's robot dog.
"Emperor!" Bud announced from the doorway. "There are protesters gathered on the front lawn!"
Nimnul flicked a switch. The large center screen showed a group of several dozen people, chanting and marching with signs. A zoom showed that one of the signs read, "Release the Rangers!"
"Rescue Ranger fans?" asked Nimnul incredulously. "Now?"
"Maybe you should take care of them first," said Francine.
"Are you nuts? I may have a vendetta against them, but the situation on the Moon is life or death right now!" He turned to Bud. "Is the convoy ready to move?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
"Then we move, now." He floated out the door, followed by most of the technicians.
"But what do I do?" Francine asked.
Nimnul snapped his fingers, and Bud gave him a manila folder stuffed with papers, which Nimnul then passed to Francine, leaning in close. "These procedures are in charge while I am gone. All you have to do is follow them, to the letter. Bud, your job is to make sure she never deviates from my instructions. Let's see if you can do that right, Empress."
"Yes, your Excellency," Francine replied through clenched teeth. She wasn't sure, but from what she could see of Nimnul's eyes through the reflective lenses of his goggles, it appeared that his left pupil was considerably larger than his right.
