A Built-In What? Really?

"Help me," Vicki asked Dan'l. The big man shook off part of whatever effect had left him out of sync with reality. The most beautiful, most desirable woman in the world wanted his help and he would help her.

The fat man Dan'l had stunned lay across the path out of the bedlam of the store. Vicki tried to move him without hurting him, she remembered how strong she had felt a few hours before and feared ripping the man's arm off.

Dan'l stumbled over with a big goofy grin, like an oversized, bearded Shemp Howard. He took the man's feet while she got the shoulders. Together they picked him up and lay him across the nearest checkout counter.

"Lard ass on Aisle 3," Vicki whispered. "Oh, that's not nice."

The man came around as she settled him gently on the counter.

"Goddess?" he said. "Goddess?" He clutched at her and looked as if he were so happy he could cry. "You touched me."

"Uh," said Vicki, dodging his grasping fingers. "This is not good." She wondered that she didn't feel sick at her stomach at the look in the man's eyes. She turned to see if anyone else had caught up to her. Dan'l turned and looked, too, stepping partly between her and the rest of the store.

The crowd, if a dozen or so customers and clerks make a crowd, moved slowly, zombies in an old-fashioned horror film. Nearest were a mother and daughter, eyes shining, arms straight out in front of them like cartoon sleepwalkers. They were only about eight feet away, murmuring, "Beautiful lady, we love you," and other such horrifying sentiments.

She turned to look at Dan'l. He looked back, still a little unfocussed like he'd been smoking weed with Cheech and Chong. But he smiled at her and it didn't have that sheen of vacant, mindless love that the others seemed to radiate. Maybe he had gotten exposed a little at a time in the truck and so could resist more or he just had more willpower or character or something.

"Let's go," she said, taking his hand. "We've got to get out of here."

He nodded slowly, turning back toward the door but unable to take his eyes off her.

She snapped her fingers in his face. "Wake up, Guitar Man!" she said sharply. "You're going to have to drive!" And the rest of these people are much worse off than he is, I'm as bad as opium, apparently. "Poppies, poppies," she muttered under her breath.

Dan'l shuddered all over but seemed to recover another little bit of presence of mind as they reached the doors and together pushed them open. The air outside seemed to revive him more and he took a deep breath.

Encouraged, Vicki turned back to the crowd, shambling toward her. "You all have to wake up. When I leave, you will all wake up and -- and you won't remember that I was here. Good bye!"

Several of them called back, "Good bye, Lady."

Somehow it reminded her of the Weird Al parody of Michael Jackson's Thriller, with a graveyard full of Nutty Professors. Suppressing hysterical giggles she rushed through the door, tugging Dan'l after her.

"He did what!?"

"ASS says the Constable dropped a bomb on the planet," said Gooma.

"That can't be right! Those wogstaffers are supposed to be fudden do-gooders!" said Twirt, greenish chelicerae looking a sickly purple near the cephalothorax. "What's the galaxy coming to when cops bomb the hyperpilous cephaloindices off the nacreous indigenes of a fudden interdicted planet?"

"Chill over," said Gooma. "It's not that kind of bomb. It's a skotonergic bolus."

Twirt looked more confused than reassured. "Oh. So, that's the kind that doesn't explode?"

Gooma winced. "Oh, it's going to explode but it's skotonergic, the local wogstaffers don't have the sensors to detect the explosion or the infrastructure to be damaged by it."

Twirt wagged his cephalothorax. "Constable is suffering from post-cranial inversion?"

"No, he's a clever fudder, they all are. I'm betting he's had his ASS design the burst to activate any non-functioning skotonic mechanisms."

"Oh," said Twirt, trying to work it out. "Is that bad or good?"

"That's bad. He's going to wake up the others."

"Oh!" said Twirt. "But he doesn't even know about the others."

"True. He's looking for us but that bolus is going to punch all the button on every skotonic device in the star system."

"Fud me," said Twirt after considering. "He's not going to like what he finds."

The moving air seemed to do more to clear Dan'l Broome's head than any effort by Vicki to control a power she hadn't even known she had. She spent a few moments wiggling her nose and twisting her ears to see if she could find any hidden controls. Pulling on her left ear lobe with her right hand had the disconcerting effect of starting something in her belly to vibrating like a -- well like a vibrator.

It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, certainly not, but she switched it off with another pull of the same earlobe. Maybe later when she was alone but right at the moment she didn't need another distraction, even a pleasant one. Those aliens that had given her the new body must be inventive but perverse, she decided.

"That was weird," said Dan'l, showing signs of returning initiative -- she'd had to order him to get into the truck, start the engine and drive away. "Does that usually happen when you go out in public?"

"Uh? I dunno, I've got amnesia. Sort of, kinda," said Vicki, sounding very blonde. She giggled, I'm not really a ditz, I just play one on in the comics, she told herself.

"Uh-huh," said Dan'l.

He's blinking a lot. Wonder what that means? thought Vicki. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Oh, sure," said Dan'l. "But everyone in the store seemed to think they knew you, like a rockstar or something. And I know that business, music and performing, and I -- I don't think I've ever heard of you before. Vicki Starr, didn't you say your name was?"

"Well," admitted Vicki. "I think that's just my stage name. I don't remember my real name...." She trailed off wondering if that was at all plausible.

"Oh! Okay, that sort of makes sense.... Maybe you're a reality TV star? I never watch Reality TV. Except Dancing with the Stars, of course."

"Of course," said Vicki. "Oh!" Could she make something up that sounded plausible, something about a TV show or...? Better not, she decided. Lies like that would always turn out to be a bad idea. Chalk up another life lesson learned from Japanese anime. She grinned.

"What?" Every time he glanced at her he obviously had to pull his eyes away and back to the road.

"Never mind," she said. "I thought I'd remembered something but I guess not." And I'm wearing this paint-covered old smock that doesn't fit, she thought. Pheromones, it must be pheromones and here we are in the cab of a truck almost touching, lucky the windows are down.

Dan'l chuckled, glancing at her again. "You're cute," he said. "I ought to have guessed you're someone famous but I kinda stick to my own shop unless someone I know is performing."

"You're cute, too," said Vicki with a giggle. Then stopped talking for a moment to consider the implications of saying that -- and meaning it.

Constable Neener's ASS counted backward from seven in the Galactic tradition. "SEVEN... SIX... FIVE... FOWER... THREE... TYOO... ONE. BOLUS ENTERED DIRTY ATMOSPHERE OVER LARGEST POPULATION CENTER. SKOTONIC PULSE PROPAGATING THROUGH DIMENSION SIX AND SEVEN EIGHTHS. FIVE TARGETS ACQUIRED, ALL ON PLANET."

"Five?" said Neener, surprised. "Decoys?"

"POSSIBLY. BUT ALL SHOW SKOTONERGIC ACTIVATION. ALL ARE WITHIN A FEW OCTOSTADIA OF THE CENTER OF ANOTHER LARGE POPCENTER. TARGETING AREA WITH SKOTONIC SCANNING MICRO-DRONES."

"Good work, ASS," said Neener. "Any response to our calls?"

"NEGATIVE. THEIR ASS IS SILENT."

"Their ASS and their asses will soon be mine," said Neener.

"DRIZ ME," said the Constable's ASS.

Am I really attracted to guys now? Vicki wondered, not daring to look at Dan'l again. He had such broad shoulders and big blue eyes and she was sure he had dimples that just peeked above the edge of his beard. Vicki felt something stir inside. Oh, not that built-in vibrator again, she thought.

But what she felt was the pulse of skotonic energies flowing through her like the prickling sensation when blood flow is restored to a sleeping limb -- except this was internal and all over. Something inside her hummed with power. She felt strength in her legs and back and knew that once again she could leap tall buildings in six or seven bounds and bounce bullets off her forcefield if she needed to. She also felt her costume and ears re-appear and something she hadn't really noticed before, it felt like she had a tail now.

Oh, great, did I always have that? It's probably a fluffy little bunny tail, she thought. But why do my powers pick just now to turn back on. And can I turn stuff back off?

She suddenly remembered the comic books instruction manuals she had hidden under a bush in the park. "Uh," she said to Dan'l. "Do you know where Mile Square Park is?"

He glanced at her and almost did a double take. "Where did you get the bunny ears?" he asked.

Vicki concentrated and imagined the ears shrinking down and disappearing into her mass of blond curls. "Bunny ears?" she asked trying to sound innocent. She had felt the costume and tail disappear, too, and could not help smiling at Dan'l, partly in relief and partly.... Well, it was sort of a funny joke on him.

The smile almost undid Dan'l. He yanked his attention back to the road. "Uh, never mind," he said. "I'm seeing things. Mile Square Park? In Fountain Valley? Sure, I know where that is."

"I think I left something there," said Vicki in the sweetest voice she could summon, "could we please go and see if it's still there?"

The truck took a dido as the impact of her voice hit Dan'l's pheromone-soaked mid-brain. He beamed a goofy smile across the seat at her. "Sure!" he said.

"Watch the road!" she squeaked.

He turned to the wheel and swerved across two lanes back to his proper one. "Sure!" he said again.