🚀 go-pugleaf

                FROM THE FILES OF TEAM M.E.C.H.A.

         ADAM DOUGLAS: YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN (PART 1)

              By Robotech_Master, aka Chris Meadows


    "I don't believe it.  How could they have broken  up?   After
all  we  went  through..."   Adam  Douglas  was holding a copy of
SUPERGUY DIGEST magazine, which he'd picked up from the shelf  he
was standing in front of in the grocery store.  On the cover were
emblazoned the words "Team M.E.C.H.A. Breaks Up!!!"  Glancing  at
the  article,  Adam  sighed. "Something else for me to have on my
conscience.  Just great."
    Adam put the magazine back on the shelf and left  the  store.
It  wasn't  like  it  meant  anything.   They probably would have
broken up anyway even if he hadn't  left.   And  if  he'd  stayed
around,  things would have been a whole LOT worse.  "Yeah, and if
I tell myself that enough times, I just might manage  to  believe
it."
    Adam was in Sikeston, a small  town  in  southeast  Missouri,
after  a couple of weeks of working his way west.  He wasn't sure
why he was going west, instead of north or south,  but  something
inside  seemed  to  want to come this way.  He'd done odd jobs to
earn the money to get him this far, and was currently employed at
a  blueberry farm just outside of town.  It was the kind of place
where people could come and pick and take home  all  the  berries
they  wanted  at  a few dollars a gallon, then, after the picking
season was over, migrant workers came through and picked all  the
rest.
    It wasn't a bad job, actually.  Adam had been there for three
days  and  had improved his picking speed immensely.  Add to that
the fact that he could eat as many berries as he wanted,  and  it
turned  out  to  be  a pretty good opportunity.  But the farm was
almost all picked out--pretty soon, Adam Douglas would have to be
moving on again.

    Adam stood in front of  the  bush  and  picked  the  berries,
taking a cluster of the round, marble-sized fruit in his hand and
gently rolling it until the berries came loose and  fell  with  a
dull  thumping  sound  into  the plastic bag in the bucket he was
holding beneath them.  Adam once again marvelled at their  size--
when  he'd  eaten  blueberry  pie in the cafeteria of the Garrett
Falls high school, the berries had been about the  size  of  BBs.
They  were  a  different  kind  of blueberry, Adam had heard; the
smaller ones were easier to machine-process, but this kind had to
be picked by hand.
    As Adam picked, he heard a rustling sound  in  the  blueberry
bushes  nearby.   He  looked  down, and was somewhat surprised to
notice a grey and white, furry head poking out.  "Huh?  Oh."   He
reached down to pet the dog on its head.  "Well, where'd you come
from?" he asked rhetorically.
    "I come from Nature  herself,"  the  large  white  dog  said,
stepping  out  into  the  aisle  between  two  rows of bushes and
sitting down.  "How about you?"
    "Bwa?" Adam gasped,  falling  backward  and  landing  on  his
posterior on the ground.  "What--you talk?"
    "I speak the language of many things," the  large  white  dog
said. "Including humans, yes."
    "What--who are you?"
    "I am Dog," the dog said.  "That is both who and what I  am."
Dog  scratched  behind  his  left  ear with his left hindpaw.  He
looked like a Great Pyrenees, Adam thought with part of his mind,
while most of it reeled crazily.  "And you are Adam Douglas."
    "How do you know my name?" Adam asked.
    "When you are one with Nature, many things become clear," Dog
said.  Then  he  laughed,  a  funny, barking kind of laugh.  "But
enough of that mystic wisdom BS.  I  can't  let  myself  get  too
serious  or  I  come off like Mr. Miyagi.  Hey, what's the matter
with you?  You act like you've never seen a talking dog before."
    "I...um...haven't..." Adam said.
    "'A dog is a dog, of course, of course.'  Nope, doesn't  fit.
Ah,  well."  Dog stood up and walked over to Adam, sitting down a
little closer.
    A few things  were  beginning  to  percolate  through  Adam's
partially paralyzed brain.  "You--you're magic, aren't you?"
    "I wouldn't put so fine a point on it, but, in a word, yes."
    Adam scrambled to his feet and backed away.  "Then stay back.
I  don't  want  anything to do with magic.  Not after what--"  He
trailed off.
    "After what you did?"  Dog cocked his head at him.  "My  boy,
you're the reason I'm here."
    "I don't--" Adam said, taking another step  back.   Then  his
eyes  met Dog's, and something in those canine eyes compelled him
to stop, to come back to where Dog was and sit down.
    "There.  I hate having to do that, but I can't  let  you  get
away  before I've said what I came here to tell you."  Dog sat on
his haunches in front of Adam and looked him in  the  eye.   "Not
too  long  ago,  there  was a great disturbance to the balance of
Nature, known as the Industrial Revolution."
    "I know.  I was there," Adam muttered.
    "And you regret it."  Though it was phrased as  a  statement,
Dog's eyes added a silent interrogative.
    "Yes."
    "Why?"
    "Because I nearly killed a man!" Adam replied angrily.   "And
I shot up one of my friends really badly.  And it wasn't even for
a worthy cause! It's real easy now to look in the mirror and  not
like the man I see."
    "Listen to me," Dog said.  "You did the wrong  thing,  it  is
true.   But  you  were  doing  what  you thought was right at the
time--at least you meant well."
    "Hah.  Hitler 'meant well' too, and look what he did."
    "Now is not the time to wallow in self-pity," Dog said.  "You
have  to  put  all that behind you.  You must learn to accept who
you are, what is inside of you, in order to--"
    Somewhere across the field, someone yelled, "Hey, what's that
dog doing in there?!"
    Dog looked exasperated.  "Damn."  He glanced at  the  bushes,
then  looked  back at Adam.  "Think on what I've said.  I have to
go, but I'll be around."  Dog leaped to his  feet  and  ran  back
into the bushes.  Adam jumped up and followed, but when he pushed
aside the bushes to look into the next aisle, Dog had vanished.

    A few hours later, Adam was riding west in the back of a farm
truck,  along with about seven or eight other workers.  They were
going that way anyway,  they  said--what  was  one  more  person?
Besides, he'd managed to make a few friends among them, even with
his only mediocre grasp of Spanish.
    No one was saying anything, because the sounds of  the  motor
and the wind rushing past made conversation difficult.  They each
were left alone with their thoughts.  Adam was thinking about the
Revolution, but he was also thinking about the strange experience
he'd had earlier that day.  Who or what was Dog?  Had it all been
an  hallucination?  And what had he meant?  Adam could understand
the "doing what you thought  was  right"  part,  but  what  about
"accept  what is inside of you"?  How did what was inside of him,
whatever it might have been, have any bearing on the situation?
    After a while, Adam realized that this kind of  thinking  was
only  sending  him  around  in  circles.   He  had to think about
something else.  He  was  nearing  the  portion  of  southwestern
Missouri  where  the  M.E.C.H.A. HQ was located.  He didn't doubt
that he could let himself into it without  being  detected.   But
what  would  he  do  then?   Take a Cyclone or something? No...he
couldn't do that.  It would be going against the promise  he  had
made  to  himself--that he'd take no weapons, so that he couldn't
hurt anyone again.
    There really didn't seem to be  much  of  a  point  in  going
there,  anyway.  Sarah was across the Atlantic Ocean in Terrania,
preparing for her sister's Royal Wedding.  True, he had a comlink
and  she probably did, too...if he wanted to speak to her, all he
had to do was take it out and turn it on, it  was  as  simple  as
that.   And  yet  it  was infinitely more complicated.  He didn't
want to say anything to her until he could say it in person.  And
he still wasn't sure exactly what he would say, anyway.
    Perhaps it would simply be best to keep going, drive right on
past TMHQ and not look back.  But on second thought...

    Adam Douglas stood at the edge  of  the  forest  by  a  small
county  road,  about  twelve miles away from Cassville, Missouri.
It was so familar that it was like coming home--but Adam knew  he
couldn't  stay.   He  couldn't  even  afford to be seen by anyone
here, lest it lead to complications.  He  wasn't  ready  to  come
back yet, but he had to come back anyway.
    He had come to  the  conclusion  that  he  couldn't  continue
working  his  way across the country like this.  Even though Adam
Douglas was an expert hitchhiker, it wasn't getting him where  he
was  going  very fast (wherever that was).  However, he knew that
in the M.E.C.H.A. headquarters were stored a  dozen  or  so  non-
mecha  motorcycles and other vehicles, constructed by the CAD/CAM
systems  for  use  as  normal  transportation.   Even  though  he
wouldn't take a Cyclone, he could certainly use one of them.
    And so Adam Douglas moved stealthily through the undergrowth,
avoiding  the  places where he knew IR sensors and hidden cameras
were set up, heading for the hidden entry to the Team  M.E.C.H.A.
former headquarters. The door was just over that rise...

    Lincoln Douglas sat in the control chair in the TMHQ  command
center,  sipping  a  cola  and  eating  a  BLT  sandwich he'd put
together.  Work on the nanites was progressing slowly.  It was to
the point where only Dr. Science could really understand what was
going on.  Lincoln had kind  of  a  working  knowledge,  but  the
really complicated stuff he left up to the good doctor.
    Link sighed.  It just wasn't really  the  same  since  they'd
broken  up.  He  was  bored.  Even if he wanted to go solo, there
wasn't really any crime to fight around Cassville.  Come to think
of  it,  the  only  crimes they'd ever really fought (besides the
takeover of their own base) had happened  elsewhere.   It  wasn't
like  there  was  much  of  a point to heroing in rural southwest
Missouri.
    Finishing the BLT, Lincoln pushed the chair back and got  up.
"Well,  as  official  caretaker  of this base, I guess I might as
well make  another  inspection  tour..."   Other  than  help  Dr.
Science with his technological innovations, inspection tours were
just about all he did now.  He was getting to  know  TMHQ  better
than  anyone,  and  it kind of helped him accept it all to assert
his authority (even if the only thing he had to  assert  it  over
was the base itself).
    If being in charge felt this good,  Link  reflected,  he  was
almost  sorry he'd chosen to forego team leadership when Mike had
offered it to him. No, on second thought, he wasn't  sorry.   The
rest  of  the  team  had  been  primed  to go their separate ways
anyway, and at most he would just have held some of them a little
longer  against  their  will.  The schism had been destined, ever
since Adam had jumped out of the M.E.C.H.A. jet.
    Adam.  Adam Douglas, Lincoln's brother.  Where  was  he  now?
And did Lincoln still blame him for what he'd done in the heat of
battle?   Link  didn't  know  the  answer  to  either  of   those
questions.   It  was  kind  of hard to continue to hate one's own
brother, especially when all the damage he'd done had since  been
undone.   Except for the breakup of the team, of course, and that
wasn't really his fault.  More like everybody's.
    Link still wasn't sure what he'd do if  he  saw  Adam  again.
Would they talk?  Or would he try to punch Adam's lights out?  It
was so hard to say.  Rather than dwell on  it  any  longer,  Mike
tried  to  bring  his mind back to concerns about Team M.E.C.H.A.
headquarters.
    "We ought to get a  Xolchiportation  station,"  Lincoln  said
aloud.  "I'll  have  to remember to drop the ALU some email about
it.  After all, when Team M.E.C.H.A. gets  back  together,  we'll
probably need easy access to the rest of the country, right?"  He
threw away his trash, then turned toward the door.  As  he  left,
he  barely missed seeing a shadowy figure slip in front of one of
the new hidden cameras he'd installed over the last week.

    Lifting the cover on the keypad by the  main  entrance  door,
Adam  slid  the  cardkey  into  the slot.  It wasn't actually his
cardkey--he figured they would have changed the passcodes by now,
and  regardless, he didn't want to set off any alarms--it was one
of Dr. Odd Science's.  Adam had found it lying on the  floor  one
day  and  kept  it.   Odd was so absent-minded that he was always
losing things like that anyway.  He surely  wouldn't  notice  the
loss.
    Keeping close to the wall, Adam moved down the corridor.  The
elevator  would  be  right  down  here,  and then the vehicle bay
wasn't far at all. Adam wasn't really worried about the  security
cameras...there  probably  wasn't anyone stationed in the control
room right now anyway.
    Moments later, Adam stopped in front of the door to his  room
for  a  moment,  placed  his hand on the "open" button.  He could
step inside, into the room that had been his back when he'd  been
a  member of the Team.  It would be just as he'd left it that day
when he'd left for Terrania to pick Sarah up.   The  bed  unmade,
various  gun  magazines  scattered across the floor or stacked by
the desk...For a moment, he wondered if the light would still  be
on.  That would be quite an electric bill...
    No...he couldn't go in.  It was tempting, but it  was  wrong.
He  couldn't  let himself have any connection with his past until
he'd earned that right back.  He could only  be  a  visitor  here
now...nothing  more.  He removed his hand from the door panel and
went on.
    It only took a few minutes to get  to  the  vehicle  bay  and
select his vehicle.  It was a large touring bike, built along the
lines of a Harley Davidson, with panniers large enough to carry a
good  supply  of  gas.  The license plate, Adam noticed with some
satisfaction, read ADAM-01.  "Yeah, this baby was made with me in
mind."   It  probably  had  been,  too...Mike had made a point of
designing standard vehicles suited to each of them just  in  case
they  needed  to go somewhere but weren't on a mission that would
require mecha.  (Not that this  had  stopped  Sarah  Conner  from
taking her Cyclone with her whenever she went shopping...)
    Now all Adam needed to do was load it up and get moving.

    As the bike rolled off of the dirt track and onto the  county
road,  Adam  turned  back  for just a moment to look at the place
he'd left.  He said nothing, but nodded to himself in  a  private
pledge that someday soon he would return.
    And somewhere in the distance, a dog barked and howled.


                           WHO IS DOG?

                          WHAT IS DOG?

                          WHAT UP, DOG?

                 WILL ADAM EVER REDEEM HIMSELF?

   (LET'S HOPE SO...I'M GETTING TIRED OF WRITING THESE PIECES)

         SOME OF THIS AND MORE, COMING UP SOON, ONLY ON

                            SUPERGUY!

--
Chris Meadows/Robotech_Master // chm173s@nic.smsu.edu // GEEK CODE V2.0:
GO/CA d H--- s+:- g+(?) p3(?) !au a21>150 w+ v+(*) c++(++++)$ B(S)U+ P? L
!3 E---- N++(+++) K W(!W) M-(--) V- -po+ Y+ t++(+++) 5+ !j R+(+++) G+ tv+@
b++(++++) D+ B-- e+$ u+(**) h+(*) f+ !r-- n+(----)@ y?