Heroes - Part 4

This is the situation: The Allied task force under Windy Woman has replaced the Bogan councillors and is attempting to trace the missing testicles Of Emperor Clump the One’th. Meanwhile, the old Bogan council are kept out of the way by imprisoning them in a WW2 POW camp that has been time shifted to Jimboomba. The POW camp and a Jimboomba play school share the same location but different dimensional classes. Unfortunately, there seems to be confusion in the class definition that causes the two locations to interfere with each other in minor ways. An Alliance agent, disguised as German officer Ober-ointment Schwartzenklobber, is protecting the Bogan councillors from harm while Arnell Shizeknicker returns to the cast in the role of ‘baby-sitter’ to the Jimboomba playschool infants. At the Bogan Council Office, the Allied task force start to clear up the tremendous backlog of unfinished council business. While all this is going on, a strangeness in the waters of inter-dimensional time has become more pronounced.

(It is suggested that time is the fourth dimension but this, of course, is absolute tosh. Time is applicable to each dimension in a unique way. Any employer can attest to the truth of this when comparing the time it takes an employee to get from the office along to the front door at knocking off time, and the time it takes the same employee to whip out the back for a toilet break and a quick read of the paper. Further more, time can vary within one dimension - such as the time difference between climbing up stairs and falling down them. These time variations, multiplied by the number of known universes, make time the dominant factor in any given circumstance. So, if you are tempted to say you don’t have the time for something then you are probably wrong. It may simply be the case that there isn’t enough time where you are at the moment – so just get your arse in gear and move!

Time can also be ‘felt’ and not just by the sentient. Every structure in every universe can feel time, which is why trees and buildings fall down most inconveniently and which is also why Newton completely missed the point when the apple fell on his head. Similarly, it is why the yet unrecognised principal testicle of the left-most bunch that once belonged to Clump the One’th has begun to resonate.

A Beaudesert dairy farmer had unearthed this fossilised testicle in the 1920’s and used the oddly shaped rock as a garden ornament. Many years later, an enterprising grandson raised the rock to the roof of his produce shop. He painted the rock green and called his shop ‘The Huge Pumpkin’ and there the rock remained. But within the last few hours, the fossil has sensed that its time has come and the wind that billows down from the mountains has at last worn a tiny gap in the ribbed surface of the fossil and the pressure of air is breaking into the mass of tubules within the stony structure. These tubules clash one against the next and set up a tiny vibration that increases as more and more of the pressure passages are opened. The sound is amplified by dusty air sacs and passed on to the next tubule mass and the next air sac until, eventually, the major sound passages are sighing and chiming against the outer shell. For the first time in six hundred million years the principal testicle of the left-most bunch of Clump the One’th has begun to sing The Gathering Song.)


BOGAN COUNCIL BACKLOG.

(In their efforts to make time to complete their search for the missing sacred relics, the Allied Task Force must quickly finish off the Bogan councillors’ backlog of work. To this end, they are tackling the councillors’ number one priority. Blob the Boulder has set himself across the state railway line near Flagstone. Together with Windy Woman, Elastic Lass and Bogie Man he waits for the next freight train to appear.)

Windy Woman: Everyone ready?

Bogie Man: Check!

Elastic Lass: Check!

Blob the Boulder: Check! It’s coming! I can feel it through the rails; it’s like a very low rumble.

Elastic Lass: You sure that’s not Windy Woman?

Windy Woman: Give it a rest, for goodness sake.

Bogie Man: I can see the train. Get in place and stop the bickering.

(Slowly, the interstate freight train trundles nearer. They are interested in the third car, which looks like a steel plated battlewagon, but first the train must be stopped. Bogie Man races through the scrub beside the track until he is 500 metres closer to the approaching train. He then lies hidden - and waits.

A minute later the huge diesel engine clatters and rumbles past. The first and second cars roll by and Bogie Man leaps. He clings like a spider to the side of the third car and then wriggles into the gap between third and second where he uses his powerful arms to pull the cars together as he kicks the coupling free.

Bogie Man crouches in the gap with his back against one wagon and his feet braced against the other; then, with a great bellow of effort, Bogie Man straightens his massive legs. The train springs apart. The diesel engine and two cars hurtle away from Bogie man as he drops his feet to the rails, pushing with all his might to brake the remaining wagons. A cascade of sparks fly from his boots as the train slows while, ahead of him, Bogie Man sees the diesel hit Blob the Boulder like a bomb hitting a mountain.

A blood-red fireball engulfs the diesel as it disintegrates against Blob the Boulder’s immoveable bulk. Wheels, engine parts and twisted steel panels soar into the air and a thunderous BOOM rolls across the surrounding country and echoes through the mountains like a dying storm. The two cars behind the diesel shatter into matchwood and scatter consignments of cheap Chinese toys through the fireball, turning the toys to molten splashes of coloured plastic.

The diesel driver and his offsider, both from New South Wales, are killed in the explosion but the Chinese toys had been destined to choke twelve Queensland children so, although tragic, it was a pretty good trade-off really.)

Windy Woman: Well that went quite well I thought.

Elastic Lass: You ok Blob?

Blob the Boulder: Yes thanks. A bit smudged, but quite ok.

Windy Woman: Perhaps we should check the contents of car three. I’d hate to get it to the council office and find we’ve got a load of frozen turkey feet.

Elastic Lass: I’ll take a look.

(A quick survey of the third car reveals an air vent high up on one side. Elastic Lass puffs her cheeks and begins to change shape and size. There is a sound of squeaking rubber as her head reduces to the size of a pea and the rest of her body stretches out behind like a thin rope. With a tiny grunt, Elastic Lass pushes her head through the slats of the air vent and her body slithers after it. The others wait patiently for only a couple of minutes and then Elastic Lass squeezes back out of the air vent and resumes her normal shape and size.)

Elastic Lass: It’s there.

Bogie Man: All of it?

Elastic Lass: How should I know? It was hard enough getting through the keyhole to see it, don’t expect me to do more than that. It’s bloody dark in there, you know.

Bogie Man: Right, let’s get this wagon rolling.

(Elastic Lass pushes her hands beneath the front wheels of the carriage and she begins to reform once more. Her limbs and body warp and extend as she changes her structure from within. In only moments, she grows into a huge double ring that arcs high above the track. Her body cells are now linked in a complex construction of cantilevered rods and hollow spheres producing an immensely strong but feather-light material that the makers of military aircraft and kiddies toys would chew off their own faces for. She ends her construction at the rear wheels of the armoured carriage and Bogie Man braces himself at the back of the carriage and pushes. His whole body bulges with power as the carriage rolls onto the tracks created by Elastic Lass and as the carriage is rolled on, Elastic Lass completes the circle of rails behind it until the armour plated carriage is enclosed in the structure like a giant mouse on a monstrous exercise wheel.

Windy Woman climbs to the roof of the carriage and anchors herself securely before beginning her own transformation into the ramjet shape of her natural world. There is a gradual build-up of pressure that eventually becomes a hammering roar of hurricane forces jetting from Windy Woman’s rear section and the great wheel begins to turn. With the armoured carriage and Windy Woman riding the rails constructed within it, the wheel trundles across the paddocks in the direction of Bogan Central. Bogie Man lifts Blob the Boulder and gallops ahead. Together, Bogie Man and Blob smash aside any obstruction in the path of the wheel. Trees, buildings, power poles, farms and small villages are thrown aside or battered to rubble while the wheel rumbles along behind. A great track of flattened earth extends swiftly across the land and the wheel rolls on under Windy Woman’s howling power. They pause briefly to tidy up the mess they make of the Bogan motorway but even so, they reach the council offices car park in less than an hour and an hour after that they are once more at the conference table in deep discussion.)

Windy Woman: In front of each of you is a case containing six million dollars; this money is the share out from the consignment of new one hundred dollar bills we took from the train this morning. When we finish this meeting, you are to take the money to the respective banks used by your councillors. You will be given the access numbers you need to deposit this money into each councillor’s bank account. This will complete the councillors’ number one priority task of acquiring personal wealth. Any questions?

Cyclotron: Is six million dollars enough? I don’t know the relative values on this planet.

Super Chook: Well, it should keep them going for a month or two, at least long enough for us to finish our job.

Invisible Woman: But don’t forget we have a few more of the councillors’ priorities to deal with first. What’s next on their list of things to do?

Bishopric: Who said that?

Green Garbo: Whoever said it should remember we’ve almost completed another priority today. Thanks to Bogie Man and Blob the Boulder’s efforts we’ve done most of the ground work on the new road link between Flagstone and the Gateway Motorway.

Windy Woman: That’s true but I think we had better complete these things in the order the councillors want them done. So – next on the list is what?

Bishopric: I believe their next priority is a one-month holiday for all of them somewhere really nice.

Windy Woman: Anybody got any ideas on that?

Action Man: There is a community competition planned between the four main local councils. The first prize for the winning councillors is a weeks holiday in the Bahamas. The competing councils are Ipswich, Scenic Rim, Bogan and Gold Coast. The prize is donated by Stripland Farmland Acquisition and Compact Development Company who are donating four prizes all together.

Windy Woman: What’s the second prize?

Action Man: For the second placed councillors there’s a weeks holiday each in the Bahamas.

Windy Woman: And third prize?

Action Man: Is a weeks holiday each in the Bahamas.

Windy Woman: Fourth?

Action Man: The same.

Windy Woman: So, this development mob is going to make sure that all the councillors from all four local councils get a weeks holiday in the Bahamas. But Bogan councillors want a month. That means we have to make sure that Bogan win all four prizes which means we have to neutralise the opposition.

Green Garbo: Me and Mafia Hatman can just take them out – no problem.

Invisible Woman: I think we need to be a bit more subtle than that. We have to make sure we win every event without letting any other competitor finish. I’ll give it some thought.

Action Man: Whoever said that had better think fast, the competition starts tomorrow at Jimboomba Rotary Park.

TO BE CONTINUED.