🚀 go-pugleaf

And now, not quite sure what to make of this, Go Go Gadget Productions
presents.....



223DON'TTRYITAUTHORSONLY.   The Silly Frontier.

These are the voyages of......what?  we've already done the NojTrek
spinoff?  Oh, very well, then.  As you were.


   In a particularly empty patch of the Author's Altverse, a ball of Nerf
floated.  At least, it looked like a ball of Nerf, what with nothing else
around it for comparison.  But if you *could* compare it to something, you
would soon realize that it wasn't any ordinary ball of Nerf, but a ball of
Nerf over five thousand miles across.
  It was, in fact, a planet.  Specifically, Planet Mitchell, home of the
dreaded (well, maybe) Edit Vampires, the villians in a semi-recent plot to
take over the mighty, beer-sodden Superguy Authors.  Their plan had failed
after the Authors encased their planet in a solid layer of impenetrable
Nerf, trapping the Vampires forever beneath it's soft, spongy, totally
harmless folds.
  Well, most of them were trapped.

  A light shimmered out of nothingness near the drifting Nerfball, then
exploded into the copyright-violating trademarked special effects of a
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine wormhole.  A ship appeared, exactly as
one normally does from a subspace wormhole.  Another ship followed, then
the wormhole vanished in a puff of Editorial power.
  The two ships cruised forward at low power, side-by-side.  The first was
a standard Starfleet Runabout, with the name "Authorial Whim" printed
across her sides.  The second was a unique, sleek space fighter whose
blue-and-white nose seemed to cut through the very fabric of space even when
it was just puttering along.
  Aboard the Runabout, the Author Gadge studied a monitor for a moment, then
flipped a comm screen open.
  "'Whim' to VTAS-1.  Looks like you were right, Elma.  I'm reading widely
scattered planetary debris along with high quantities of Nerf that weren't
here when we left.  Judging fromt he dispersal patterns, it looks like
someone really did blow up the Author's Planet a couple months ago."
   The screen lit up with the computer-generated floating-eyeball icon of
Elma, the Author's faithful A.I. and Muse.
   "Confirmed.  The scattering is in a directional pattern strongly
indicative of Noj-level activity.  Additionally, I can find no traces of that
ship amidst the debris."
   The screen suddenly (and without warning) split, the second half showing
an interior view of the VTAS-1 space fighter, which looked rather like the
interior of a 1988 Jeep Cherokee.  The driver, a man clad in a blue-and-white
uniform who bore a distinct resemblance to Gadge, looked grumpy.  The
lady beside him, a beautiful Edit Vampire known as Kestrel, looked
worried.  The driver was the first to speak.
   "So much for this tour of IslandiaBase you kept talking about."
   "Eric, please, we've been gone a long time."
   "Yeah, so long I'll bet not even Gadge over there remembers what we were
supposed to be doing."

   In the Runabout, Gadge gazed upwards in annoyance.  "Eric, I told you
before.  The Author's Altverse has been dead for months now.  Nobody's
written anything since I got back from DC.  Things have changed while we
were off fighting DarkElma."
   "You mean fighting _you_ and DarkElma."
   "You know what I mean."
   "At least we managed to zap you back.  That program-gone-bad got away to
who knows where..."
   "Will you two stop it?"  Elma overrode the comm channel, "Gadge, this is
no time to re-hash what we've just been through!"
   "But the Reader's haven't....." noted Gadge apologetically.
   "We've been over this a dozen times during the wormhole flight.  The
Author's Altverse is at a stalemate.  Nobody cares to hear how the DarkElma
plotline finished, and Robotech_Master is waiting for you to come back.
So we'll come back, return to AA continuity, and worry about what
happened to DarkElma later, in a flashback."
   "But..."
   "I think you should listen to her, Gadge."  Kestrel's voice spoke
through and audio-only feed, "You know how Elma gets when her mind is made
up."
   "Okay, okay."
   "And besides, Cantara needs to get back to the Noj if she's ever going
to wake up again."
   "I said okay!  Geez!"
   Gadge looked over his shoulder to a portable cryo-sleep unit that he had
Edited up after the final battle with DarkElma.  In it floated the inert
body of Cantara, the other Edit Vampire who had been Kestrel's partner for
the past few centuries.  Drained by the evil, vampiric A.I., Cantara had
been left in a coma that could only be cured by a massive influx of
Inspiration Dust.  And the only place in the Multiverse where sufficient
quantities could be obtained were the offices of Madamouselle Muse, Inc,
the Authorial Assistance firm whose offices now occupied an entire deck of
the immense starship Noj.  Assuming Gadge could talk them into it, of
course.
   Gadge sank back into his seat, exhausted.
   "Have I got a headache.  Nobody's gonna understand this post, I know
it."
   "Nobody has to. All we have to do is get back to the Noj before somebody
starts up another AA Plot."
   "Thanks, Elma."  Gadge noted sarcastically, "Another AA Plot.  I can
hardly wait.  What do you think it'll be this time?  Sentient bottles
of Yoo-Hoo?  Giant space ducks?  A cheap ripoff of Babylon-5?"
   "I'm beginning to regret showing up at all."  quipped Eric from the
driver's seat of the spacefighter.
   "Oh, you'll find something to do, I'm sure."  Gadge grinned slyly. "I hear
Yvonne's an Author now."
   "Who?"
   Gadge scratched his head, puzzled, and was about to ask a question when
Kestrel interrupted.
   "If you three would get back to the matter at hand,"  she said, staring
hard at Eric, Elma's icon, and the nearby Runabout, "the first thing we have
to do is *FIND* the Noj.  It's had months to sail off to who knows where,
nobody's been writing about where it's gone!"
   "Now Kestrel, don't be worried."  Gadge said calmingly.  "Robotech_Master
is the one who writes about trying to locate the Noj.  I'm not in the
mood for that kind of sequence, so we can just jump-cut straight to it."
   "We can?"
   "We did."
   "We did?"
   "We're there."
   "Huh?"
   A warning light beeped on VTAS-1's dashboard, catching Kestrel's
attention.  It was the mass detector, warning the Jeep's occupants that
something large was nearby.  Not that the instrument was needed, for the
object in question nearly filled the forward windshield....
   "My Author...."
   "Dear Noj...."
   "Starship profile matches description of the Starship Noj."  Elma noted
dryly.
   It was the Noj all right.  Nothing else could possibly match the image
of a dull steel-grey mouth harp over two thousand miles long, floating in
deep space.  Tiny pinpricks of light were barely visible on it's surface.
Pinpricks which, after magnification by Elma, were revealed to be whole
cities built on the outer deck of the ship, cities that could not possibly
exist in the vacuum of space, but did anyway.  There were other sources
of light, too:  missile explosions and the flash of laser-fire, as the
Noj's ever-vigallent, ever-nearsighted Anti-Asteroid defense system
blasted away at anything and everything in its vicinity that was larger
than a photon (it occasionally took pot-shots at those, too).
  "Hey look!"  Eric pointed to a largish space station that was orbiting
the Noj.  "What's that?"
  "Looks like Amigoid's BioDome,"  observed Gadge from the Runabout. "Cute.
He's got a field running to protect him from the asteroid defenses.  All
the missiles are turned to Nerf just before impact.  Gotta remember that
trick for a Con sometime."
   "Um, Gadge...."  Kestrel sounded worried, "The Noj is going to notice us
out here any moment now....."

   Aboard the Runabout, Gadge smiled.  "Don't worry your pretty little
vampiric head about it.  I've got that one covered.  Opening communications
channel to the Noj's combat computer now."
   An auxiliary com panel hissed angrily with the sounds of a computer
demanding an ID code.

  "Gadge, no!"  Kestrel shouted into her own mike.  "The Noj won't care if
we give the ID codes, it'll think we're asteroids anyway!"
  "I believe Gadge has forseen that difficulty."  said Elma calmly from
her dashboard screen.  "He has been monitoring Superguy Activity all during
his absence.  He requires only two words to obtain clearance from the Noj,
no matter what it thinks we are."
  "Two words?"
  "Affirmative.  Although most effective on other Authors, recent events
have left their mark on any being, sentient or otherwise, who resides in
the Author's Altverse.  The mere mention of them will incapacitate anyone."
  "I don't understand."
  "Re-read the Superguy Logs of last month.  Then you will."

 On the Runabout, Gadge was busy stuffing plugs into his ears, putting
earmuffs over his head, and installing a white-noise generating helmet to
prevent himself from hearing his own voice.  Then, with the proper
precautions taken, he leaned over to the aux panel, which was still
screaming angry demands for landing clearance issued by the Noj's Combat
Computer.  Slowly, carefully, the Author spoke two words, wincing in pain.
   "Industrial Revolution."

  The com panel yelped in terror.  Deep within the massive computer nets of
the mightly starship, the Combat Computer clutched its daemons around its
input routines in horror and ran screaming from the central processor,
diving into a backup memory bank to hide.

  Grinning ear-to-ear, Gadge removed his hearing protection and called back
to VTAS-1, where Kestrel and Eric sat with dumbfound looks.
  "I'd say it'll be about a year before any Author can stand to hear those
words without foaming at the mouth.  Two years, in Gary's case.  The other
residents of this Altverse won't react quite as badly, but I figured even
the good O'l Noj's Combat Computer has had enough of *THAT* crossover."

   Kestrel stared blankly.  Eric shook his head in disbelief.

   "Hey, don't sit there all day, the effects won't last long, and the
computer probably won't be dumb enough to willingly open a comm channel to
me a second time.  Elma, aim for the open shuttlebay just to the south of
Noj York City.  I'll follow you in."
   "Affirmative.  Course laid in, docking sequence engaged."

   The VTAS-1 spacefighter dove away from the Authorial Whim and quickly
entered the open bay.  Upon landing, the needlenose of the ship peeled
open like a metal flower to reveal a core vehicle at the heart of the
spaceship:  A dark-blue Jeep Cherokee drove out from the hollow cluster
of add-on modules and parked near the front end of the bay.  Eric and
Kestrel emerged from the Jeep and yawned, both stretchign their limbs
after the long spaceflight.  Behind them, the more sluggish Runabout
cruised in slowly and settled down for a landing.  Gadge emerged from a
side hatch and stared up at the vast, towering height of the bay.

   "Wow.  And this is just one of the small landing pads, too."
   "Can we get Cantara out of the ship now?"  Kestrel jogged over to the
starfleet vessel, with Eric keeping step behind.
   "Oh, right.  Almost forgot.  Elma, get over here and help me with this
cryo-unit."

   Elma drove VTAS-1 over and backed up to the Runabout's cargo ramp,
popping the Jeep's rear hatch open and folding the back seat down.
Wearing thick insulated gloves, Gadge and Eric slowly carried the ice-covered
tube down and loaded it into the car while Kestrel looked on nervously.

   "There, it's in.  Elma, the main corridors and turbolifts of this ship
should be wide enough to let you drive VTAS-1 straight to sickbay."
   "They are, I have already downloaded a copy of the interior schematics
into my navigational banks."
   "Great."
   "Sickbay?" asked Kestrel, "But I thought we needed Dust from...."
   "She does, but not quite yet."  Gadge tightened a seat belt around the
cryo-sleep cylinder while Eric plugged a power feed into the cigarette
lighter socket.  "Madamouselle Muse is not going to take kindly to the idea
of willingly donating their precious Inspiraton Dust to an Edit Vampire,
after all.  We're gonna take Cantara to Sickbay for now while I try to get
permission from Euradyce."
   "But..."
   "It's the best we can do."
   "All plugged in."  Eric checked the self-diagnostics.  "Ready to roll
anytime you are."
   "Then let's get this show on the road.  Elma, I'll follow along behind.
GO GO GADGET ROLLER SKATES!!"

  Still protesting slightly, Kestrel climbed back into the Jeep's passenger
seat.  Eric took the driver's side, although Elma insisted on doing the
driving herself.  Since the rear of the vehicle was occupied by Cantara's
cryo-unit, Gadge clamped onto the car's rear bumper with a magnetic cable
and let Elma tow him out of the shuttlebay and through a set of wide
double doors that let to the ship's interior.

  Once the Author and his party left, the shuttlebay was suddenly quiet.
The vast chamber was completely empty, save for the Runabout and the
strange, shattered-flower arrangement of the opened VTAS-1 Interceptor Mode
pods.  Gadge hadn't bothered to install a new AI on the Runabout's computers
since kicking DarkElma off, so the ship was totally still.
  At least, it was still for a few moments.  The echos of the Jeep's engine
had barely died away when a small, furry nose poked out through the
Runabout's open cargo door.  The nose was followed by a pair of large,
round, curious eyes.
    "FRINK!"
  Another small, furry animal head soon appeared next to the first.
Followed by a third, then a fourth....soon, an entire horde of lemurs stood
on the open ramp, staring about in awe.
    "FRINK!"
    "PTANG!"
  One of them pointed to a turbolift shaft.  Next to it, a wall screen
was cycling thorugh a series of interior hallway schematics of the Noj.
    "FRINKFRINK!"
  The lemurs scuttled, hopped, and leaped over towards the screen and
studied it, their wide eyes adsorbing every detail.
    "PTANG!"
    "WHOOOO!!!!"
  And them with a flutter of ring-tails, they bounced into the waiting
turbolift, whose doors closed behind them.
   Once again, the bay was silent.


AAAAAAAAIIIIEEEE!!!!!!!  GADGE AND ELMA ARE BACK IN AA!!!
WILL GADGE EVER *REALLY* EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO DARKELMA???
ISN'T THIS A CHEAP, LAZY COP-OUT????????
HE'S AN AUTHOR.  WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT????????
WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN GADGE MEETS YVONNE???????
WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN *ERIC* MEETS YVONNE???????
WHAT ARE THE LEMURS DOING ON THE NOJ????????
DOES THE CHAPTERHOUSE EVEN CARRY GRAPE SODA AND TWINKIES???????

ALL THIS, AND HOW TO CHANGE ELMA'S OIL, ALL ON AN UPCOMING..........


                         SUPERGUY!!!!!!!!