Friday, February 24, 2012

The Impossible 5 Chapter 8


Chapter 1 can be found here: http://saneinsanities.blogspot.com/2012/01/impossible-five-introduction-and.html
Chapter 2 can be found here: http://saneinsanities.blogspot.com/2012/01/impossible-5-chapter-2.html
Chapter 3 can be found here: http://saneinsanities.blogspot.com/2012/01/impossible-5-chapter-3.html
Chapter 4 can be found here: http://saneinsanities.blogspot.com/2012/01/impossible-5-chapter-4.html

The heroes found themselves in a present day city on an overcast day. They were near a blue bridge that was blocked off to traffic.

“This almost looks like our world,” said Rita.  “Wonder what city this is.”

People were starting to stare at them.  One person close by asked, “Is this part of the demolition? Some sort of ceremony?”

“The what?” asked O’Canada.

“For the rail portion of the bridge.”

O’Canada decided it was best to take the out. “Sure,” he said.

“F--- you,” the guy said.

Okay, Wallbreaker realized, whatever was happening with the bridge was clearly a point of controversy.  “Maybe we should keep walking,” he murmured to O’Canada.

“Yes, but we should also try to find a place to change. The locals don’t seem to have our types in their midst too often.”  He pointed to people taking pictures of them.

“I hate the @#$%ing paparazzi,” Helltrotter said.  The people in the area gasped.

O”Canada said, “Uh, we’re entertainers.  Wallbreaker here is a ventriloquist.”  He whispered, “Best be discrete. I don’t think they have talking horses here.

The started walking away from the bridge. Fortunately across the street was a place called Market Square, and they found washrooms to activities their miniature civilian clothes devices in (the Glowing Man also had to wear fake skin. Even that wasn’t perfect, but it was daylight, so that muted some of the glow.  Helltrotter waited outside of Market Square. As long as he didn’t talk, no one seemed concerned about the horse, which was interesting to Wallbreaker. It seemed that horses in this city weren’t entirely unknown.

They met up with the horse again soon after. They gave money to a panhandler and carried on.

A couple blocks later took them to a road where lots of busses were travelled, some double-decker. They gave more money to panhandlers and entered a pizza place for lunch while an increasingly annoyed Helltrotter waited outside. 

After they sat down, O’Canada found a newspaper and showed it to the others. “We must be in Victoria, BC,” he murmured.  “Looks like the Johnson Street Bridge is being replaced by a new one.  That must be the controversy.”

“But we’re probably not in our Victoria,” pointed out Token Woman.  “We’d be home now if we were. And we still have one more rod to get.”

“Unless it’s actually in our homeworld,” said Rita.

Token Woman shook her head. “Uh uh. Look at the year on the paper. It’s wrong even though everything looks like the present.  It could be pretty close though.”

Heading left seemed to take them away from the downtown core so they started heading towards the downtown core, giving more money to panhandlers along the way.   The Crack Heroine said, “Guys, I hate to say it ‘cause I’ve been on the streets myself, but we might have to budget ourselves.  There are a lot of panhandlers in this city. Soon we might not have any money left.”

They noticed a library a few more blocks down and a half a block across the street (passing a few more panhandlers across the street) and found an Internet terminal that someone had forgotten to log off. 

“Apparently we’re characters in comic books on this world,’ said O’Canada, after an Internet search. 

Maybe his soap opera theory was wrong and they were comic books instead, though Wallbreaker. But if that was the case, wouldn’t the movement be a bit more static?

Still something occurred to him and he asked to take over the computer.  There were things about his world that never seemed right and he wanted to test a theory out.  Eventually the time limit was reached but not before Wallbreaker got the conclusion he wanted. “I have no idea where the rod is,” he said, “but we have to be extra careful here. The only reference to a possible real resurrection was Jesus a couple thousand years ago. I think if we die here, we stay dead!”

End part 7

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