"A Real Scorcher!" Early April, 1991 AD, that is Late in the Second Month of the year 2366 Galactic: [Nomad Of Norad] The Fourth Doctor's pseudoTARDIS materialized in front of the kingdom of CyberSpace. Nomad, Printer, T4D and Devastator stumbled out the doors looking stunned and shocked. They stood and looked all around them at the kingdom, at the trees and hills and shrubbery, at the city skyline in the distance. "What... what are we going to do?" asked Printer, the cyborg. "I... don't know..." said T4D. He stared at the skyline, hints of tears in his eyes. "It's hard to believe," said Nomad, "a short six months from now..." he trailed off. "Dead," said Devvy, "everything dead, buildings wrecked... the whole world dead!" [Printer] [Title: Ok here goes ] Devvy cried "We must do something!" "Like what?" said Nomad. "Perhaps we could try to find the exact date that all the destruction occured," suggested Printer. "An then Stop whatever it is somehow?!!" said T4D. "Humm. Perhaps i could use my Chronodisplacer implant to see if we are perhaps on the brink of whatever it is. Problem is, my CDI's only work 2-3 days forward/backward in the time stream. Any further and i might implode." states Printer. "Didnt know you could do that Printer," said Nomad. "Maybe it would be easier to just do a time jump in the PseudoTardis again. Not limited the way your CDI appears to be." "Only problem is that if we hit the exact time segment, the Tardis could be swept up into whatever caused the problem, so I best just check to the limit of my abilities. I am expendable and if something happens, that will leave the rest of you to figure out the solution to this problem." said Printer. "Ok its your call then. Do as you wish Print. Good luck," said Nomad. "Ok Take cover everyone," said Printer. Everyone took appropiate cover. Suddenly, Printer began to glow with a strange greenish light. Then he appeared to shrink to a point and vanished with a thunderous Kaboom! The shockwave rattled nearby windows and raised a small dust cloud. Everyone came out of hiding. "We needed to hide for that? That was no big deal," laughed Devvy. "Well, now what," said Nomad. "I still think the Tardis might have been a better way," said T4D. Devastator said, "Perhaps we should start searching around to see if anything presently is causing a problem that could lead to such devistation. You know like maybe some idiot is doing something that will blow the world up or something." "Thats a good idea Devvy," said Nomad. "Perhaps if we go to my place, perhaps the computer can find something unnatural or so forth." "I will leave this note for Printer. No telling how long it will take him." [Nomad Of Norad] So they climbed into Nomad's skycar, and to his house they went. Sometime later at his house, Nomad threw up his hands in frustration. "We aren't getting anywhere!" "We don't have sufficient data," said Joshua. "Perhaps if you went -- if Redstar will pardon the expression -- Back to the Future to research it?" "I intend to do that anyway," said Nomad. "But can't you even... make a guess?" "Yeah," said Devastator, "so we'd have more of an idea of what to look for." "Well," said Joshua, "from the damage you described, it sounds like it could be solar flares." "Alot of help THAT is," said Cappy. "Could you suggest anything more than that?" "We could look for recordings, I suppose," said Nomad. "Yeah," said Redsar. "At least River City was still more or less intact." River City was about the size and location of downtown Jacksonville in the other timeline. "Let's go to my own pseudoTARDIS and move all the lab equipment aboard," said Nomad. Off they went to his lab. [Printer] [Title: Gulp! Hot potatos! ] The group rushed to Nomad's well stocked lab. They got all the portable detection equipment together, and some not so portable. Into the Tardis went everything they could think to bring. "Well Joshua, think of anything else we need" said a sweating Nomad. "Negative, Nomad. Looks like you got everything. I am happy to be able to go along on this ride via the Datalink. My replies might be a bit slow to space/time distortion but we have a link," said Joshua. "Now do we wait for Printer or go ahead?" said Cappy. "We can hang around a bit i guess," said Nomad. A full day passed...... Kerblam! A small clap of thunder was heard outside. Printer rushed in. Everyone said, "About time!" "Well find anything significant Printer?" asked T4D. "Not a dang thing. Everything appeared normal. I went 3.567 days into the future and nothing was evident," sighed Printer. "Well we have all decided to do a time jump in the Tardis back to the point where we found the destruction." exclaimed Cappy. "That sounds good, I cant think of anything else to do," said Printer. "Alright! we have a plan. Lets do it group!" shouted Devvy. Everyone piled into the Tardis and the doors slid shut. Slowly the Tardis dematerialized. [Nomad Of Norad] So, they arrived Back in the Future again and slowly filed out of the TARDIS. They were in the midst of River City, looking up and around at what was left of the skyscrapers. "AMY's TV should be over that way," said Nomad, pointing. "It is more likely to have the information we are looking for." Onward they went to the old television studio, which had been bought out by Ophelia Productions when Mainframe moved away. The place was a mess, the lobby doors were blown open, one was fallen and the other hung by a hinge. Inside, the ceiling tiles had fallen in patches, cables and fiberoptics hung down here and there. The Intrepid Group stepped carefully through the debris. "Find the video morgue," said Nomad. "Uh... if you will pardon the expression." Soon they found the... uh... video morgue. "Man, this place is a mess!" said Printer. Half of the shelves were toppled over, and video cubes were scattered everywhere. Other shelves were tilted pricariously, ready to fall. "I hope we can find the right recordings in all this mess," said Nomad. "Great screaming lungfish!" "I hope there's a cube-reader around that still works," said Cappy. "Look for anything dated after, say, the second month of 2366," said Nomad. [Nomad Of Norad] [Title: Boo! ] So they searched through the cubes, gathering every one of them dated in 2366 Galactic, and piled them onto a handy table. "Man, this is going to take HOURS to go through!" said Cappy. "Well," said Nomad, "there's no hurry. We could take DAYS to study everything, and it wouldn't matter. We could still return a few minutes after the point in time that we left for here." "It's just the... tedium of it," said Cappy. "Isn't there a quicker way?" "Well," said Printer, "we could probably have asked the reference computer... but it's a fused mass, I checked." Redstar and Nomad sighed. "Such a pity," said Redstar, "the computer would have had all of this in its memory, we could simply have asked it to tell us the details of the disaster." "Hmmmm," said Nomad. "I suppose we could take the tapes back to the past with us and feed them all into Joshua. But, you know, it occurs to me we could probably find out the gist of it by simply watching the last cube. It almost certainly will have the info, and very little else except disaster reports and such." "Why yes!" said Devastator. "Of course!" So they found the cube with the latest date, and went to find a video-cube reader. [SysOp] It was not long before they found a vid-cube reader, however, it was non-functional. "No problem!" said T4D, displaying assorted tools and gadgetry. The damage to this area actually seemed minimal, almost if things had been abandoned, such as in a ghost town. "Let's look around," suggested Nomad. "If things seem looted or if things seem unchanged, would be a clue as to what happened." It would be a bit longer before the reader would be finished, but before then.... "Oh sure, as if any looters would bother to search a TV station for goodies," snapped Cappy. [Nomad Of Norad] (Ooops! You forgot that T4D hadn't arrived yet! Guess he showed up just now, on his own...) "Hey!" said Nomad. "It just occured to me, the last recording would actually still be in the cube-recorder." So they all headed to the newsroom set. They found the place was itself a shambles, and the camera was toppled over onto the floor. There was also a dead body in the anchorman's seat, and one laying next to the camera. "OOooooooo!" said Cappy, and shuddered. "Nice!" said Devastator. "They must have stayed here up to the last moment, broadcasting right up to the end. What sacrifice!" Cappy found the cube-recorder back in the control booth. "Well, the cube-recorder looks intact." He pulled the cube out of the device. "And the cube looks okay." "Play it back," said Gary Wolfe, getting to the door. The others were behind him, they crowded into the chamber as Cappy put the cube into one of the players beside him. [Nomad Of Norad] (I apologize that I made this story so hard to continue. From the beginning, I had had the idea all planned out as to what had caused the damage, had hatched it out with Printer, but the way the story came together for this scene, I just couldn't come up with an easy way to portray it. Neither could Printer, who kept insisting it was MY turn to post on here, even tho I had posted the last story entry on here already! Well, I came up with a way around it finally.... Here goes!) So they punched the playback button, and got complete gibberish! The screen barely showed a human figure talking about something they could not make out. Snatches of words could be heard, sometimes part of a phrase, but nothing could be gathered from it. "Well, so much for that idea," said Cappy. "It may get better," said Devastator. They watched the whole thing. It didn't get better. "I suppose we could take it back to our own time and have Joshua analyze it," said Nomad. "Einny is better at that sort of thing," said Redstar, "he's had a little more experience with it." "Both could," said Nomad. And so they returned to present-day and let the two computers study the datacube. * * * * * * * "Well," said The Fourth Doctor, "what do you make of it?" "Neither of us were able to get the complete details of it," said Joshua, "but it appears some kind of experiment involving a spaceprobe sent inside the Sun caused it." "But wouldn't it have burnt up?" said Nathan, Nomad's newly-adopted six-year-old. "It had special shielding that kept the Sun's heat out," said Einny. "That must have been some shielding!" exclaimed Devastator. "Actually," said Nomad, "it is theoretically possible to shunt all the heat away from the ship with a sufficiently big heat-sink, but actually, they could probably have shunted that heat into negative hyperspace, or into a pocket dimension. Come to think of it, they could have put the entire spaceprobe into a pocket dimension and scanned the Sun through the linkup with normal space." "So what went wrong?" asked Printer. "They apparently didn't know," said Joshua. "They guessed the probe exploded, but no-one could figure out why such a relatively minute object, compared with the shear size of the Sun, could have caused such massive solar flares. No matter how powerful the explosion of the probe might have been, it could not have influenced the Sun at all." They all remained silent a moment, trying to fathom the unfathomable. Finally someone spoke. "But do we know who launched it?" said Printer. "I mean, will launch it?" "It was impossible to tell from the recording," said Joshua, "but Einstein recognized the design of the probe as one that RealiKeen Engineering is developing." "What?!" said Redstar. "My own company?" "That's perfect!" said Cappy. "That makes it easier for us. Being an employee of the company, you should be able to get to them with your information. Perhaps we can convince them to abort the mission." "I don't think it's that simple," said Redstar. "I'm not that far up in the hierarchy. It could get sticky." [Printer] [Title: Assualt ON RealKeen! ] "Great Guardians!" shouted T4D. "What is it T4D?" said Nomad, with concern in his voice. "That... that... that means we will have to assualt RealiKeen and destroy the probe if Redstar cannot bluff his way in!" stammered T4D. "Let's try the bluff route first," exclaimed Printer. The intrepid group piled into the (whos) car and headed to RealiKeen! [Nomad Of Norad] "Assault RealiKeen Engineering?" said Redstar. "Not so fast! All we gotta do is take this information to the research team working on the probe." "Yeah, and I'll bet they'll believe every word of it, too!" said Printer in a tone that meant the opposite. "Well," said Nomad, "if they don't, all we gotta do is drag one of them into the TARDIS and take him sightseeing!" "That might work," said Cappy. "It is one heck of a lot easier said than done, though," said Redstar. "Well, if we succeed in that, so much the better," said T4D. "If we fail to convince them, and find we can't take one for a trip...." "THEN we can assault the company!" said Devastator, with glee. Nomad rolled his eyes heavanwards. "Well, let's collect the info together, anyway," he said. [Nomad Of Norad] And so they gathered the info together; and Nomad, Cappy, Redstar, Printer and Devastator went to RealiKeen. The Fourth Doctor stayed behind with his pseudoTARDIS. Soon, they returned. "What did I tell you?" said Printer. "They didn't believe us!" "I have never seen anyone so thick-headed in all my life!" exclaimed Nomad. "Guess that means we try to grab one of them and take him on a trip next, eh?" said Cappy. "And if that fails," said Devvy, "I know exactly how to break back into the place to destroy the probe!" Nomad rolled his eyes Heavanwards. "Terrrrific!" he said, shaking his head. "Oh?" said Redstar, sarcastically. "And how do you propose to do that? The place is protected by a DoubleDeadly Kill-InTruder 5000 security screening system... WITH the Vaporizer option!" "Oh yeah?" said Devvy. "Well, BigBadBruiserBuddy, the notorious supercriminal on Velonna XVII, was protected by a TRIPLE-Deadly SlaughterTruder 10,000! I broke right through that mutha and iced that guy! Believe me, the DD-KIT 5000 is EASY for me to crack!" "Nevertheless," said Nomad, "I hope it doesn't come to that. Let's gear up for Operation Timesnatch now." He glanced around him. "Where's Gary Wolfe? We'll need his TARDIS..." He trailed off as a certain distinctive grinding/wheezing sound filled the air. A tall blue box with a flashing light on top materialized in the room. Gary Wolfe stepped out of it. "Congratulations!" he said. "Whatever you did, it's done the trick! The future is restored, no solar flares." [FREDRICH] [Title: OK... ] Fredrich also exitted the TARDIS. "Looks like you guys haven't any more problems, eh?" he said. Nomad looked at Fred, saying, "Maybe, maybe not. By the way, where did you come from?" Fredrich laughed, then said, "Well. I was testing that quantum accelerator you wanted for Christmas, and it bounced me into the future. Luckily, Gary just happened across my trail." T4D interrupted, asking, "Do we need something more to assure the problem is solved?" [Nomad Of Norad] (AH! They're POSTING again! YAHOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!) At that point, Joshua, Nomad's household computer announced "There is a call coming in... in scramble code." "Who is it from?" asked Nomad, hurrying towards the front door. "It's from RealiKeen Engineering, they're using Nomad Industries' special scrambler code." Everyone hurridly followed Nomad into the house. "Why are they using Nomad Industries codes?" asked Fredrich. "How did they come by them?" "Well," said Redstar, "our two companies have sometimes colloberated on things." At this point, everyone arrived in Nomad's communications area... or rather media center. On the big screen appeared a view of the lab at RealiKeen where they had been developing the probe. The man on the screen said, "Oh there you are." He smiled. "Well," said Redstar, "good evening Dr Trappertrapp." "Good evening Redstar, I have to appologize for dear old Dr Zoonbonc... he IS a rather stubborn and thick headed old bird." "Well," said Redstar, "we all have our quirks, I suppose." "Well, you guys were right! Despite Zoony's disbelief, your demonstration gave me enough pause that I had to look into things." "Oh?" said Nomad. "And what did you find?" "Well, I went back and checked the probe over very carefully. I ran a diagnostic on it and everything came out perfect." Dr Trappertrapp paused a moment. "Too perfect," he added. "The response it gave left out very minor flaws that I knew where there and that we had had to compensate for, balance for, when we completed the probe. They were flaws, tho, that were far within any margin for safety in the operation of the probe, and in fact would not have influenced its function in any way. But they were not present in the readouts I was getting." Dr Trapp paused another moment. "So I pulled open the inspection panels and went inside." He paused yet again, this time in what they call a dramatic pause. "I found that the diagnostics equipment had been replaced with dummies. They simply gave out perfect responses, no matter what. The probe's circuits could have been shorted out completely and the equipment aboard a hopeless wreck and these dummy diagnostics systems would still have given all green lights." "So then what did you find?" asked Gary Wolfe. "Well," said Dr Trapp, "I went on into the probe, wondering how in the world this could have been done, and finding myself quite frightened about the whole thing... and I found that the equipment aboard had been replaced with... well... some completely alien technology I have never seen before." "What sort of technology?" asked Devastator. "It was all organic, some kind of grown technology... and our simulators have determined it was specifically made to cause gigantic solar flares." [Nomad of Norad (in post production)] And that was all that was learned. Months passed. Redstar was transferred to another department of RealiKeen, in a place that would be called Illinois in our universe, to investigate the place the probe had been assembled, looking for leads. None were found. Captain R/C left due to an unrelated matter, and then vanished, due to that same unrelated matter. Printer, for other unrelated reasons, had to return to his previous home, many many miles south, in a place that would be called Gainesville in the other universe. He still kept an eye out, though, for anything that might be related to the mystery. Nothing turned up. They all had come to a complete dead-end. It would be a solid year before anything more came to light.