Spanner Stilson, Fixer #4Tiffany brings him a cup of black tea. Piping. He sits at a small table with chairs around it before a large pair of glass doors. He stares out the glass doors at the darkness. There is an immense subterranean cavern out there with an accompanying subterranean river and subsequent waterfall. Here begin Fist City’s most graceful escape routes via tunnels. The river is navigable and opens into one of the city’s lesser waterways. Spanner reaches for the remote control on the breakfast table. He has built and programmed a device to control the intricate lighting he has installed in the cavern as well as the attendant cameras and security system. He ties it all together nicely. A handyman’s job always comes to involve security. He simplified the existing systems and added power and operational redundancy. If it’s good enough for business it’s good enough for a lesbian superhero girl band’s underground lair. He chooses a dramatic effect lighting for breakfast and throws a few extra flood lights on the ceiling to make it seem like morning. Subterranean caves can have their drawbacks. The security cameras can project onto the breakfast nook windowshades. Spanner can scan the entire complex over ham and eggs. He sees the white water at the bottom of the falls. they are hardly monumental but certainly make enough noise to necessitate raising your voice to be heard. He sees the tunnel entry where he recently collapsed and was discovered in Fist City. He finds comfort in what’s happened since then. All of the Fist City Misfits have expressed real trust and interest in Spanner Stilson and his fixing. There were lights and cameras before Spanner came. There was even action but none of it worked nearly as well. It took a few days for him to recover from his initial misadventures. After several days of tinkering with tabletop projects in his rapidly tool-filling room he had enough. He flew out his coup and souped up the security. he added cameras and detection devices and magnetic door locks and escape hatches. (Some he didn’t tell anyone about. That’s the way to keep a secret.) Spanner and Tiffany are flung together in their potential parenthood. They share a particular affinity and happiness that extends beyond these potentialities. Often, they share their happiness, affinity, bed and breakfast with Something Who. Something Who comes to the table humming the Andy Griffith theme through clenched teeth. She wears a black silk kimono with red piping and a silver dragon embroidered across the back. She drums on the table nervously with a fork and a spoon. Her eyes reflect rock formations in a distant corner of the cavern near the waterfall. Spanner runs through all the camera views throughout the complex. He sees only one naked lady and she is changing into something less comfortable. Something Who’s beat is bothered and erratic and increasingly louder.
Something Who: This is fucked up... He sips from a glass of juice and mulls his desire for gin.
Tiffany: This is amazing, Spanner. We can all share so much.
Spanner looks back at the viewscreen projected on the windowshade and sees a blinking indicator for a triggered motion detector. Spanner switches to the sector in question far from the complex downstream from the falls quite a ways. The screen is filled with an infrared image of blackness. Something large dimly moves slow across the camera’s frame.
The form is halfway across the infrared screen. They watch in silence. Two-thirds of the way across. Verily, what appears at the far left edge? Another slow dim beast advances on the leader’s heels.
Spanner: What super powers do you girls have besides the sex and the music anyway? Left to right: Second lizard’s nose 1/3 across. First lizard’s nose out of view. Such large beasts move so monumentally. A third appears. Seconds later, another. The first beast is into the field of the next closer camera as more filter into the first camera.
Spanner: Hell’s bells. | |
Metahuman Press is © and ™ 2005-2006 Nick Ahlhelm. All rights reserved. | |