A BP&G adventure - Pockets; Heretic

[joegoda]

It was hot, it was dark, and Pockets was not happy. His left shoulder ached like hell; his broken right arm was fairly useless. He tied it against his body using his belt and worked to get something, anything working in the steering room of the ruined wagon.

"I'm lucky I didn't break my stupid legs. Then I'd be in real trouble," He groused, reaching over a boxy panel, cables and wires pulled out and running down the sides. He was standing on his chair, and, as the wagon was now upside down, had reached up to the underside of the control station.

"Red to red," he muttered. "Black to black. Yellow to... yellow to... where the seven hells is the other yellow?" Digging and pawing through the box, he found the cowardly wire and twisted the two broken ends together. "That should do something."

He was rewarded with silence.

Exhausted, he dropped back into his chair. "Dammit, dammit!" He rested to the count of a hundred, stood up and checked his work again. "It's all together, so why isn't it working, Pockets!" His shout was stifled, over-loud and echoey in the close quarters of the room.

"Ouch," he said, pushing his left hand against his forehead. "Don't do that again, Pockets. You got an ouchie in your lil head."

He sat there, letting the pain in his temple subside a bit. "Who was that woman, Pockets? Who the hell was she? She just popped in and then popped out again."

"I don't know, old chum. Maybe someone you'll meet once we get out of here."

"If we get out of here, you mean. She had a nice voice, I'll give her that."

"Maybe she was just a figment of your imagination."

"Whatever. I do know that talking to myself is not going to get us anywhere, so would you please shut up and let me think?"

He pushed the chair back against the wall, thinking that he had been in this position before, many times. And each and every time, something would happen, something would enable him to get out of it.

"Yeah. Usually Bags."

"I told you to shut up. I'm thinking here."

"Have you tried whacking on it?"

"No, I haven't tried whacking on it!" This conversation with himself was beginning to tire. "It's a delicate piece of equipment. Whacking it would just make it worse."

"It's already broken. How much worse can it get?"

Pockets considered that wisdom. Truly, how much worse could it get? He looked around to what was available. Not much. He had his screwdrivers, a few small wrenches and his five pound sledge hammer.

"A bit much, don't you think?" He asked his wiser self, nodding toward the hammer.

"Well, considering that it will be surprising if you can lift it one handed with a busted Shoulder, yes."

"Huh. There is that, I guess." He looked harder at his surroundings. "Okay. If we can't whack it from the outside, let's see what we can whack from the inside."

The thought that he might be able to ask for the assistance of his other three hundred and sixty selves entered his mind more than once. He had decided against it, though, simply because it was the easiest solution. He had given up the God business, and if he slipped back, well... he might not get back out again. As frustrating as it was, being human was much more fun because of the difficulties, and not just despite them.

Picking his way carefully, he climbed up until he was standing once again on the chair, leaned over the opening for the control panel and reached in, poking and prodding.

He yelped once when a blue flash occurred and his finger burned on a blue spark. "Ah ha!" he cried triumphantly. "It got no ground, you silly gint. You forgot to attach the cabinet wire!"

Whistling a merry tune, he finished the last connection, settled back down in his chair and listened. The gentle sound of a hum built slowly, and the lights on the upside down panel flickered to life. "Come, on baby," he urged in a whisper. "You can do it."

The room shuddered, and the air in the cabin cleared. He could hear words coming from beyond the doorway.

"Daddy!” Esmeralda's voice brought a happy smile to his face.

"What is it, Esme?" Bags, answering his daughter.

Pockets jumped down from the chair and tottered toward the door way, just as Bags said, "What the...?"

"It's Unk!” Esme said.

Pockets almost reached the doorway and shouted out, "Almost got it!" and right then, like a cosmic practical joke, a sizzle, a pop, and the light from the door turned back into the dark of the ruined wagon.

Pockets sighed. Then he ranted, causing his broken arm to join him in his pain when he flailed it against the wall. The pain caused him to hiss an inhaled breath, but it worked. He stopped his invectives and collapsed on the floor, crying gently. "Dammit," he said. "I was so close."

Climbing gingerly back on to his chair, he looked into the boxy interior of the control panel. The smell of bad popcorn assailed his nose. He sighed again. "Magneto must be fried." He reached in and touched an odd cylindrical object that had three wires sticking out of it. He was rewarded with a hiss and jerked his finger back, sticking it immediately into his mouth. "Yep," he muttered around the injured digit. "It's fried."

Settling back into his chair, he pondered his options. There were, as he could see it, two. One was to pull the damaged part out and try to repair it. The other was to try to get out of here and see if the centaurs would have the material to help him repair it.

Either way, he was tired, he was injured, and he was discouraged. He got off the chair, lay on the ceiling of the wagon, and decided that the world would look better tomorrow. His left shoulder throbbed horribly, and he was concerned about the break on the right.

He reached over it to see if his makeshift sling would keep the arm immobile long enough for him to sleep a few minutes. So far the arm had stayed numb enough that he could ignore it, after his initial fainting spell. It wasn't a compound break, thank the Gods and Goddesses, but he could see that the forearm had a definite bulge and there was a very large and spreading bruise indicating bleeding under the skin.

"Gonna have to get that looked at pretty soon, chum," he muttered. Pockets had gathered enough medical knowledge to recognize the break, but there wasn't a single thing he could do about a greenstick fracture, except bind it and wait. Still, he knew that if he turned just wrong while sleeping, it would not be a pleasant waking.

He reached over with his left hand, made a fist and drove it, hard, down on the center of the bruise. After just a second or two of screaming, he faded off into blissful non-consciousness.

"Sir?" Such and odd word to hear while unconscious.

"Sir?" There it was again, and there appeared to be a gentle touch on his left shoulder.

"I must be unconscious," Pockets thought. "If I wasn't, that should hurt like hell."

"Sir? Are you awake?"

Pockets opened one eye and looked up into the face of a bearded young man, who was looking back with a concerned face.

"I doubt it," Pockets answered. "This is obviously a dream, because I'm not in pain and I'm trapped inside a broken wagon." He levered himself up on his right arm. "And this arm is broken, so I shouldn't be able to lean on it like this."

"Oh," said the serious young face, "It's no dream, I assure you. I anesthetized and bound your shoulder, and applied an herbal regeneration cast to your right arm. Granted, the bone may take a few days to heal, but right now, you shouldn't be feeling any pain."

"Wow.” Pockets looked at his right arm. Sure enough, there was a green and brown wrapping around the forearm. He tapped on it with his left hand. It was pliable, like tar, but stiff like bark on a tree. He nodded his approval. He lifted his left arm, rotated the shoulder a bit. Stiff, because of the binding, but there was no pain.

"Um, sir," The young man reached out to stop Pockets' movement. "I wouldn't put that much strain on the shoulder, please. It will take some time to recover."

"Aw heck, chum," Pockets said, "I just dislocated it. I've had worse things happen."

"No, sir." The young man was checking the binding, to make sure that Pockets had not loosened anything. "You tore your rotator cuff pretty badly. Once you had awoken, you would have found that you had lost the use of that shoulder. Please try to move it very little. The anesthesia will help, and we applied some growth herbs on the area, but shoulder tendons are very tough to regrow." He puckered his lips. "Please try to be as gentle on it as possible."

"Huh." Pockets looked around. It was still the steering room, and it was still upside down, but that was where the similarity ended. There was this young man leaning over him, and there was a very odd ladder, about three times as wide leading up to the control panel. A pair of horse’s legs dangled from beneath the boxy structure.

"Uh.” Pockets raised himself gently. He looked back to where the door was that led to the remaining wagon. There was light pouring from it. "I guess you guys broke in here?"

The young face nodded. "Oh yes, sir. We saw your wagon fall from the cliff. It wasn't until after the troops had made it all the way down, though." He puckered his lips again, obviously a personal affectation of his, indicating he was thinking. "I'm terribly sorry we weren't able to get here earlier."

"Believe me," Pockets said, "I'm just glad you're here at all." He looked towards the pair of legs on the ladder. "And who, or what is going on over there?"

With a clatter of hooves, a centaur came down the extra wide treads below the control panel, and trotted over to where Pockets lay. "Oh! Hi." A clean shaven face of a bald head stuck out a hand. "I'm Noah."

Noah smiled largely and waited. Pockets shook the proffered hand. "Yep, when mom had me, she looked at Dad and said 'Noah more!'. He brayed at his own joke, sounding almost, but not quite, like a donkey on low volume.

"Uh huh.” Pockets smiled weakly back. "And what are you doing up there?"

Noah looked back up the ladder. "Peter sent me to see if I could help. Electrics are a bit of a hobby of mine." He smiled. "Well... more than a hobby, actually. I run the electrics for the whole damn village." Another bray.

The young man doctoring Pockets stood up on all four legs. "I believe I'm done here." He said. He nodded towards Noah. "I'll report back to Peter about this one's recovery."

"Okee doke, Nate." Noah said, while he clopped back up the ladder. "You know, this is pretty messy up here." He tossed back down to Pockets. "I mean, genius, for it's compactness, but pretty damn messy." Noah bent down into the control panel, grunted briefly and then straightened up, holding the damaged magneto.

"Here's your problem, buddy." He carried it down to where Pockets lay. "I don't know what sort of power you were running here, but I can tell you this." He shook the magneto under Pockets nose. "If you don't lubricate the moving parts, it's gonna freeze up. You'll be in deep, then." He chuckled and looked around. "But I guess you know that, huh?"

He turned an appraising eye to the magneto. "So, what was this thing supposed to power? I don't see any motor on this dead buggy. In fact, it looked like it was driven by a couple of giant springs. Pretty neat trick that, but what a waste of energy. I also saw a couple of headlights up front, but this magneto would generate far too much power for them. Heck, they'd explode from the force of the power." He took a breath. "So... what was it for?"

Pockets waited for his ears to quit ringing from the volume of the man's words. "Can you fix it?" he asked.

"Huh?" Noah raised his eyebrows. "Sure, I guess. Just needs to have the bearings turned and oiled. Easy stuff. But what's it for?"

Pockets pulled himself up and leaned against the wall. "If I told you it was designed to power a small gravitonic generator that shifted time and space and opened up a wormhole between two separate spaces, would that make any sense to you? Or if I told you that it was also used to power two monitors so that I could look forward and backward at the same time? Would you understand that?"

Noah scratched a spot above his right ear. "Well... I asked for it. No, I would have to say I wouldn't. Give me time, maybe. Never heard of gravitons, but bending time and space? That's something a couple of our writers have been talking about. And monitors? I would have to guess that would be those windows that are marked 'here' and 'there', right? Nope. That's also something I haven't heard of."

He closed one eye and squinted at Pockets. "Tell you what. If I fix this magneto, and we get this gizmo working, you let me see what you got here? I think you'd owe me at least that."

Pockets thought, but not for long. "It's okay with me. I just need it done pretty quick. I have friends that are wondering what happened to me." He paused. "And I want to know what's going on with them."

"There were other folks in this thing with you?" Noah lost his smile. "I'm sorry, bud. If there was anyone in the back, there," he shoved a thumb towards the shattered wagon, "there's nothin' left of 'em."

"No, no!” Pockets said. He sighed. "They aren't here, they're there! Back somewhere else. I got to get this working so they'll be here!"

"Wow!” Noah's eyes grew large. "I guess you wanged your head pretty good!" He shook his head. "Peter told us that we weren't to discuss anything we saw in here, and I think I understand why. It was strange enough to see you with only two legs, and pink tiny legs at that, but now I know you're crazy too... Yeah, I wouldn't want to let the town know about you yet either." he shook his head again.

"Can you fix it or not?" Pockets asked, exasperated by Noah's energy. "I'll let you tinker all you want, if you just get out of here, let me rest and fix it."

"Sure, I can fix it." Noah said. "I already told you that. It's not really broken, it's just that the bearings got over heated and need to be turned a bit. Heck, I might even get you a sealed bearing on it, so you don't even have to oil it again. Which would be a good thing, cuz it doesn't look like you oiled it at all anyway."

Pockets sighed heavily. "Go fix it, and what ever you want, it's yours. Just get the hell out of here for now! I'm tired, my head hurts, and I want to sleep!"

"Sheesh!" Noah stood up and headed towards the door. "Won't take me any time at all, mister grouchy. I'll be back in two shakes of my momma's tail."

"Wait!” Pockets called. "Noah!"

The centaur poked his head back into the steering room. "Yeah?"

"What time is it?"

"I dunno. Maybe almost noon. I just finished breakfast a little while ago, but I tend to sleep late. It's possible it's only like early morning, but the sun is too high for that. I do know that it's not after noon, because the sun's not that high up and hasn't crossed the mid point. If I was to guess I'd say it's somewhere between morning and noon."

"Okay.” Pockets said. "Thanks for... whatever." There was something nagging at his mind. Something that he was supposed to do at noon. "Look, Noah, just hurry if you can, okay? It's important. Wake me when you come back, okay?"

"Sure! Not a problem. Course, if your snoring, I may just let you sleep. I mean people get grouchy when they don't get enough sleep, and you sure are grouchy."

"No, please, really." Pockets sighed. "I'm sorry, Noah. Really. I'm just concerned about my friends. Please hurry."

"Okay, will do. Be back in a jiffy." His head disappeared.

"Huh," Pockets wondered out loud. "What was it that I was supposed to do? Something to do with Esme and noon." He closed his eyes. "I'm sure I'll remember when I wake up." His eyes close, his mind shut down and he was asleep very quickly.