The Bloated One
Well-Known Member
I am cowering here in Montreal awaiting a knock on the door from Mr Graham's 'friends'. It's only a bl*** apostrophe!
While I wait, I would like to thank all of you for your comments and suggestions. All were considered. Below is a redraft taking into consideration your comments.
What I find incredibly depressing is how much this short piece needs changing. With another 100,000 already written I am looking up the side of a editing mountain. I should thank Chris Pennycate for taking on the editing of my first three chapters.
Oh well, back to the coal face....
The Chesterfield sofa materialized in the hospital emergency port at BIF headquarters, belching smoke and flames. Jules, Tarquin and Archie lay heaped on the sofa, like discarded toys on a child's bed. Rescue crews pulled them clear just before the sofa erupted in a ball of fire. Tarquin lay motionless, face up on the floor. He had a pulse, but it was faint. Professor Tommy Cramdunkle and a team of doctors arrived at the emergency port and like a Formula One pit crew they burst into life, lifting Tarquin onto a hover trolley, running diagnostics and checking his vital signs. As the hover trolley flew down the hospital corridor towards the isolation area, tubes, oxygen and flashing machinery appeared around Tarquin's body.
"Heart rate 160," said a doctor, jogging by the side of the trolley.
"30 milligrams," said another.
Tarquin's head lolled to one side, his eyes bulged and his tongue turned blue.
" Cardiac arrest!" shouted a third.
"Not on my watch," said Tommy, halting the trolley. He worked calmly over Tarquin's chest. Nobody spoke. After several minutes Tommy looked up. "He's back with us," he said, wiping his brow and signalling the hover trolley on it's way.
"He's damn strong," said one of the doctors, as they took Tarquin into isolation.
# # #
After receiving first aid Archie was allowed to leave, but Jules was arrested and charged with manipulating Earth history and saving a cognitive life form. Denied bail, he was given one telecall and taken to Antriconian, the Confederation's Penal Colony. He contacted Archie and told him to travel to the planet Tharg with Alice Cooper in order to find Smodius P. Munchfumble, a Zargothian Advocate.
“Don’t use wormholes,” said Jules, “they’ll be monitoring them. Use your wits."
Before leaving, Archie visited the emergency ward at the hospital. Standing before a plated glass cubicle Archie watched in silence. His time in the future had been fun, but today, the awful realisation that Rhia was dead and Tarquin barely alive hit him hard. He rolled Rhia’s trainee guide hologram disc in his fingers, remembering how proud she had been to receive it. She had no idea about the BIFs and their battles against the Griddleback, Leche and other despotic planets. He looked at the disc and dropped it, cracking it under his boot. Rhia’s fairytale was over and Tarquin’s snuffed out before it had barely begun.
He looked at Tarquin's unconscious body lying inside a silver mesh tunnel covered in a grey metallic shroud. His head, covered by a translucent sphere bubbled away in a blue translucent liquid. A metal collar held the sphere and liquid in place. Moving over his chest at incredible speed flew twenty android arms. Above the arms, a plethora of coloured lights flashed and throbbed in a dervish dance of light. Computer screens full of graphs, coloured bars and screeds of text moved at breakneck speed, relayed to a watching nurse drone. Archie shivered, looking at his new friend. His curly hair had gone and his face was pale and drawn, unconscious inside a light bulb full of effervescing chemicals and boiling like an egg. The surgery and decontamination was expected to last another twenty-four hours.
“Would Archie Campbell please come to the Medical Reception Centre,” a voice boomed from a speaker.
# # #
Professor Tommy Cramdunkle sat forward on his hoverstool inside the command centre high above the patient isolation pods, staring at one particular screen. There was a knock at the open door. The Professor turned to see Archie Campbell standing in the doorway.
“Come in Archie, I have a couple of questions for you.” Tommy, pointed to a hoverstool. “Do you know this Jenkins boy well?”
“Not really,” answered Archie, “but everyone talks of his potential.”
The Professor pressed buttons on a console in front of him. “Look at this.” The screen’s contents magnified and filled with silver roundels eating red and yellow starfish like creatures.
“Ugh! What are those?”
“Dr Phillius Santander’s Nanobots. Millions of them. They shouldn’t be there----only field agents are authorised to use them, but I am damned pleased to see them.”
Archie scratched his head. “They’re. . .” he looked queasy, “not inside Tarquin are they?’
“Yep, Santa’s little helpers are rounding up the Leche spores and castrating them.”
"Spores, like hay fever?"
Tommy shook his head and turned to face Archie. "Far worse. Leche pulse lances are laced with poisonous spores and hallucinogens that multiply inside their host with terrifying speed."
Archie’s shoulders sagged. “He’s going to die, isn’t he.”
The professor didn't answer. He was watching a vast wave of silver roundels herd the starfish through Tarquin’s aorta and away from his heart.
"Professor."
“Sorry, those bots are amazing! Any idea who put them there?”
Archie shook his head, “Not a clue.”
“I found a puncture scar over his heart. They were injected within the last 30 days.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Archie.
The Professor took from his pocket a silver pen like instrument with a dozen coloured pins.
"You programme them through the injection device and push the pins here in a given sequence, then dial in a number here.” He pointed to the base. “This programmes the quantity of bots released and how they act.” He stabbed the needle end into an imaginary heart. “Press and the bots are pumped through the body.”
Tommy turned back to the screen. “ But,” he said, shaking his head, “this is different.”
“Why?” asked Archie, taking the instrument from the Professor and looking at it.
“Shooting this combination and quantity was a death sentence, it’s ludicrously strong for any disease or virus known on earth.”
"You still haven't answered my question."
"No," said Tommy grinning, "he's not going to die, far from it!" He rubbed his hands together. " You see, the bots have a timing mechanism and were about to start eating him from the inside when the Leche spores arrived."
"Look," he pointed to the screen. "The spores sweep through a host body and kill in minutes, but when these spores entered Tarquin it was manna from heaven for the ravenous bots.”
“Brilliant," said Tommy, shaking his head, "bloody brilliant. Someone made a huge mistake. . .”
“and it saved Tarquin’s life.”
“Or,” said Tommy, wringing his hands and pursing his lips, “someone tried to kill him, not expecting a Leche to shoot him.“
“How long before we can talk to him?”
The professor looked at the figures pouring across the screen. “Five days if all goes well. Once the bots have finished eating and we've remove them from all parts of his body."
"But," he said, shaking his head. "The side effects of the hallucinogens are more problematic...”
# # #
Archie left the Professor and stopped to take one more look at Tarquin through the glass.
“Come, we should visit Smodius.” Archie looked up. It was Alice Cooper, a recruit from the Shropshire Canal. They had started at the Guide School together several years before.
“I’ve been asked to join you,” she said, swinging a pack onto her shoulder, “It’ll be like old times.” She looked through the glass. “Is that Tarquin Jenkins?”
“Yes.”
“Will he make it?”
“He’s a fighter, a very special boy. He has a good chance,” said Archie, with a smile.
TBO
Last edited:
