June 29, 2014. Sunday.
It was another beautiful sunny morning.
Sally lay on her back snoring like a princess. George came and moved her by the shoulder, his eyes only half open. "C'mon Sally, get up. I need to go to work." He was dressed in a red striped pizza boy's clothes. On his chest, close to his heart, hung a badge shaped as a star with words: 'Extreme Pizza'
"I don't 'eel like it." Sally pushed her head under the pillow.
"What?" George sat down on the bed and closed his drowsy eyes.
"My head, it doesn't want me to get up. It hurts when I move."
"You were drinking!" George exclaimed. "You got wasted and now you feel the consequences." He began to shake her once again, only this time he showed no intention of stopping. "Is this what you do while I'm at work, drink?"
"Please, George, let it go, I need just a minute... ten more minutes."
"Geez, Sally, you did not expect that to happen did you?"
"I did not."
George took away her pillow by force and said, "If you continue lying like that, it will never go away."
"Noooo, please, nooo." Sally turned around and pushed her head face down into the soft bed. "How do I make it stop? There must be a way to stop it."
"There is a way. You need to get up and shower the pain away, the longer you are going to do nothing about it, the longer it's going to hurt."
"Really?"
"Really."
Sally got up and rushed to the bathroom. As she passed George, he could feel a strong reek of alcohol coming from her.
Smiling, he sat on the bed and stared at the wall filled with stickers. His eyes stuck on Alfonso's picture above one of the prints telling about the lucky winning streak. Its title said, 'A lucky man makes thousands in sports bets, then wins forty million in a lottery.'
George continued staring at the sad and tired Alfonso's face for a long while. Soon, his own facial expression became identical to the one of the villain. The wrinkles on Alfonso's forehead, the weary eyes, the wide mouth with drooped down corners gave him an appearance of a gruesome man. The tired face and black eyes stared into George's, who could not help but feel pity for the guy. What must have led the evil time traveler to the dark side? What motivated him to do the things he did? he thought.
Sally walked out of the bathroom dressed up in her uniform, which had miraculously straightened but not cleaned itself and sat by George. She said, "You were right, it feels much better now."
"Next time don't drink everything you are given, stick to one type of drink."
"Not even if someone gives me it for free and says that I'm pretty?"
"In such cases especially."
"Ok, George, you're so clever. Thank you for sharing." She dropped dead on the bed.
"Sally, do you remember the plan for tonight?"
"Yes."
"Do you truly, really, honestly remember it?"
"Yes, I go in at ten pm and we do it two ways. I do it my way, you do it yours. George, may I sleep now? I really feel like it."
"Ok, Sally, ok. See you in the evening inside Alfonso's place." George left Sally lying on her bed and closed the door behind him. He jumped on the roaring moped and disappeared leaving dust clouds behind.
He worked the whole day like a horse: rushed from the shop to the clients, making each delivery on time, hoping to please his chief so he would be allowed to keep the vehicle for the evening. It was already getting dark when he left the Extreme Pizza joint, checked his backpack and bought a bundle of pizzas, which he put into the pizza trunk and drove off to Alfonso's.
Standing on a small hill, he observed the mansion. The garden was lit with floodlight so much that it appeared to be even brighter than during the day. In the place of the giant tent, a structure taking a shape of a scrappy rocket was erected about five meters in height. The whole perimeter was lit up; newly installed barbed wire ran on top of the walls making the place even more difficult to penetrate on foot.
Sally is going to have a difficult time doing her part, he noted and boomed down the hill.
———
Sally fell out of the bed. It doesn't hurt! She jumped to her feet and lifted hands up to release a portion of joy only to get hit by an invisible nail to the head. Ouch!
She went to the shower and had it for three minutes before the day's portion of water was consumed. The daily allowance left by George lay on a small table by the exit. Putting the money in her pocket, she left the room and strode to get some lunch.
On her way, she met the large motel manager. In his casual white swollen shirt, he was gluing a plaque on a notice-board. Beneath an encircled white star, in white letters and black background were written words 'Join the Followers of the Vilest Demon. We are much more fun than you could imagine.' At the bottom of plaque in smaller letters was added: 'The Cool Church and its leader Leopold suck.'
"Excuse me, Sir," Sally asked, "What are you doing?"
"Oh, dear." The manager spoke warmly, "I'm bringing joy to the desperate. Perhaps you'd be interested in checking out our headquarters? We have an interesting and very rewarding referral system and the first month of subscription is free. If not, perhaps you'd like me to show you the city? "
"I've seen the city, Sir, and I didn't like it."
"Too bad, too bad. We are really trying to become more appealing to the masses lately. We are doing everything in our power not lose against those lying, good for nothing scumbags." He pointed at a yellowish plaque on another end of the board with a picture of a smiley with sunglasses and words 'The Cool Church Guy.' Below the picture, there was a phone number.
Sally left the manager with his poster sticking business and went to calm her rumbling belly.
After she finished eating, she returned to the room. There, she checked the equipment in her bag and attached the handguns with their holsters to her suit. The two hurtful tranquilizer guns depending on the bullets used either drugged the victims into submission or disabled them in most humiliating ways, making them lose body fluids and stomach insides through the most private places, leaving them incapacitated afterward.
All ready and set she left the room, crossed a road leading to the cornfields and forests and walked the overgrown path towards Alfonso's mansion.
———
A booming sound roared. It was followed by a gust of wind. George had stopped his moped by the radio station in front of the gate. With the swimming glasses on and hair combed to another side than usual, he waited to be let in.
"State your business," said a voice on the speaker.
George cheerfully replied, "Five pizzas for Mr. Alfonso Duval."
"Get in and stop by the booth."
George stepped off the moped and pushed it through the opening gate. Behind it, on the right stood a tiny booth with glass windows. A bold man in a black suit inside it held a door knob and passionately stared at the large TV hanging on the wall. It showed an action movie. The intense scene was playing where a half-naked, bruised, masculine man with machine-guns in both hands fought his way through a jungle village. Only after a few minutes, when the action hero had made it through, the guard stepped outside. He turned on a flashlight, approached George and circled the miraculous vehicle.
"I will take them from here on." The guard came closer to the moped and was about to take the pizza package out of the trunk.
"You can't. What if you eat them after I leave them? I need Mr. Alfonso's sign on the reception."
"Oh... Oh, I see... Ok then. Sorry to disturb you, proceed to the house." He ran to the booth and put his eyes back on TV as soon as he got the chance.
"If you say so," George murmured to himself and pushed the moped forward, not daring to turn on the engine and bring the unnecessary attention. There was so much activity around the place that he easily fit in the mass of people working in the garden. Most of them were walking from the scrapyard on the left side of the road and bringing stuff to the assembly place of the rocket on the right, where people standing on ladders would weld the thing and grow it upwards. There were workers below them, standing on the platforms raised from the ground, riveting smooth steel plates on the perimeter of five massive columns that were taking a shape of engines, installing hoses and various electronic devices.
As he stopped by the entrance, George checked the king's belt under his shirt, took it off, then dropped over his shoulder. He tucked his hand into the backpack, took out the paralyzing pen, and put it into the deep pocket of his uniform jacket. With five wide pizza boxes in his hands, he clicked the door alarm and stepped back, positioning pizzas in such way that they covered his face from the peek hole.
The alarm rang like a gong and the door opened. George stepped into a wide empty hall with a fancy stairway leading to the second floor. There was nothing inside - no furniture, no plants, not even a carpet lay on the ground. Only a lonely giant chandelier swung above the ivory floor stained with traces of barely visible dirt and grass coming from a corridor on the right. The trail of stains led the stairway and then to the second floor. George found the emptiness troublesome, lifting his swimming glasses up he followed the dirty trail up. As he reached the top he paused for a second to wonder what awaited him behind the closed door.
Screw it, he thought and turned the knob, saying, "Five pizzas for Mr. Alfonso."
———
Made it in time, Sally thought standing on the hill, looking at the garden full of workers, giving birth to the death-machine.
Just as two days before, with her back bent she sneaked through the fields and over the road to the garden's wall. Sitting on her knees, she stared at the new problem in her path. On top of the wall, a net of barbed wire ran to all directions complicating her infiltration plans. Her suit had already faced some color changing issues before and if she managed to cut it, she was sure the thing, which was not very useful now, would become totally useless. Its manual said that through its fibers ran multiple nano-microchips and messing with them should be avoided.
After a click of her fingers, a transparent screen appeared on her left hand. She scrolled through a list of functions: camouflage, electric massage, motivational conditioning speech, audio books, tickling... The list went on and on with less and less important features towards the end. By each name words malfunction' or 'malfunction highly probable' were blinking.
The suit was just a prototype. A crap prototype, she thought. It would best infiltrate the place without relying on the thing. She saw piles of cut grass lying everywhere around the garden. On her side of the fence, there was a lot of identical uncut grass.
When a truck delivering junk drove through the dusty road towards the house, it did not notice when a newborn scarecrow rolled under it and clung itself to the bottom. The grass monster detached when the truck made a short pause inside the garden to let a couple of workers pass its front.
It took an hour for Sally to crawl at the snail pace from the side of the road into the closest island of bushes. From there, getting to the house became easier, since now Sally was transformed from a slow pile of grass to a fast moving bush. Eyes of workers rarely wandered off from the junk pile or the missile, and guards, whenever were not chatting, stared to the most distant objects, such as the forest line far in the horizon or the setting sun and were highly unlikely to catch Sally during her act.
After opening one of the windows and leaning over a windowsill, she noisily fell into the house. There was an important object she did not notice during the act. It was two interconnected sensors with invisible beams, attached to the both sides of the window. Leaving piles of grass in one of the smaller rooms close by, she tiptoed through the house and after reaching the stairs to the second floor hid under them
The second detail Sally missed was that putting so much disguise on her inevitability left small pieces of grass on her suit and shoes. Chit-chatting about an item called ultra-vibro-detonator and its components, Alfonso and July left the room on the second floor and went to the corridor Sally had come from to check the alarm.
She used the moment to run up the stairs, enter the guest room where Alfonso resided and hide in a tall cupboard made of thick carved wood with a wide keyhole located at the far side of the room. Silently she waited for George's arrival, or at least for an alarm caused by George's failure.
When the two time travelers returned to the room they had a short evil laugh as they saw the trail leading to the cupboard.