A Future We'd Like to See 1.7 - 20th Century Park By Twoflower (Copyright 1993), except any various brand names and things used for parody. Any relation in this story to people living or dead is actually quite intentional, but also falls under the category of parody. To anybody this story offends : Relax. It's humor, not a personal attack. Many thanks to Tentaclees and RichardPenner @ FurryMUCK for aiding me with all the UNIX functions. Enough pre-story introductory banter... * The night air over the Moon Nebulae was still, and calm. None of its employees were, however. The reason for all the nonstillness and noncalmness was a large crate being lifted in by crane, shaking and making strange noises. The instructions were simple, as usual : hook the crate up to the pen's security door and open the gate. That part was easy. However, when another bump in the crate caused it to open accidentally while six feet from the ground, all hell broke loose. A hulking figure dropped out of the crate, readying itself to a full lurching position as the assorted workers of various species and race looked on in horror. "May I interest you in some fine Amway-" A tranquilizer dart zipped into the creature's polyester side, causing it to wince and stagger about. "Stay away from him!" Mou'lldar shouted. "He can still pounce!" The creature sunk to the ground with a thump, must of Mou'lldar's relief. "Alright. Get him in the pen." * "Got one!" Clara shouted from one of the far sites. I looked up from my current dig, which had turned up little more than hamster bones and a nonrecyclable styrofoam container. "What is it?" I shouted back, over the sounds of furious brushing and scraping from the other archaeologists. "Looks like a cylindrical container of glass, with some tapering at the top," Clara responded. "I can't make out the engraving, there's too many scratches." "Bring it over here, I'll run it through the image enhancer," I said, getting up from the dusty ground and uncovering the computer equipment I had set up. Clara brushed aside some of her now-dirty brown hair, and placed the container in the slot. "With some simple texture mapping and fractal transformation, we should be able to tell what the engraving originally said. Ah, here it is." "I gotta admit, the money we spent on this system was worth it, Alain. I can't make out the last few letters... it says... 'Budwei'?" "I'm not sure either," I said. "I'll run it through the database... ah. Partial match on a brand of beer." "Beer?" "A primitive alcoholic beverage," I said. "That's it?" some little snot said from behind me. "It's a drink bottle of some kind?" "Who's the urchin?" I whispered to Clara. Clara shrugged. "Billy. I think he belongs to one of the interns." "Well, Billy," I said, turning around. "Picture this. You're in a late-twentieth century bar. 'Beat it' is playing on the jukebox, and a few motorcyclists are playing pool. One of them bumps you with their wooden pool cue, disturbing their attempt to place a round ball in a hole on the felt board. They get angry, and grab one of these." I took the bottle from the slot on the machine. "They smash it against the brass bartop. Maybe he'll cut your intestines with the jagged edge, but you can avoid that. Little to you know that his buddy at the pool game is waiting to slash at you from the side. Still think it's just a drink bottle, Billy?" "Yeah, and you're pretty psychotic too," Billy said. "As if anybody cares about relics from only a hundred years or so ago." Before I could demonstrate the technique I had described earlier, a hovership started to descend, kicking up a minor dust cloud. "Crap," I cursed. "Cover the equipment! Cover all of it!" "Where are you going?" Clara asked, as I marched off. "I want to see who our visitor is," I replied. Not unusually, Clara followed me towards the hovership. A hatch swiftly opened. "Ah, just the pair I wanted to see," a shortish, impy man with a cane said. "I trust you are Clara and Alain Fund, experts on the twentieth century? Before the Terran Confederation, space travel, and the such?" "Yeah. And who might you be?" "Hammock," he said, shaking my hand vigorously. "I've come quite a distance, but have to get back to my office very soon. I'd like you two to come with me, however." "Any reason?" Clara asked. Hammock waved a credit chip under my nose. A quick examination of the digital readout showed an absurdly large number of zeroes. "All yours for research funding, if you come with me just for the weekend. I need some outside opinions of my establishment for the insurance company." "What makes you think we'd sell out to some corporate bigwig with a flashy ship and a large bank account?" Clara exclaimed. "How dare you barge in here, almost ruin our site, and think you can buy us off with a five plus figure bribe?" "How soon do we leave?" I asked. "Eh?" Clara said. "We DO need the money, Clara," I said. "Besides, it's just a weekend and the interns can handle this dig." "We leave immediately," Hammock said, grabbing his cane. I first noticed the lump of glass at the top of the cane. Inside it was a very small picturesque farmhouse, and a hundred or so little plastic snowflakes falling on its white roof. * "What took you?" a Ytt in a black leather jacket asked Hammock as he reentered. "Oh, just had to negotiate a bit," Hammock said. "Alain, Clara, this is Malykk, well-respected dimension theorist from Yttia. He'll be accompanying us on our little trip. Driver, if you'd please take us to orbit and kick in the warp/hyperdrive?" The hovership lifted off, rapidly ascending the skies of Terra. The engine must have cost a great deal, considering that in the time it takes to say this sentence we were in the stars and on our way. "You still haven't said where this 'trip' is going," Malykk grumbled, adjusting his sunglasses. "All in good time, all in good time," Hammock said. "Care for a little bag of honey roasted peanuts?" "Err, no, thank you," I declined. "I was just noticing your cane, Hammock. That's an interesting relic, the snowglobe. I'm wondering how you got it, since all such novelty items didn't survive the great Home Shopping Network revolt of '02?" "I had it constructed in miniature from plans I acquired for a sum of credits," Hammock said. "We spared no expense." "We?" "You shall soon see." * The hovership skimmed the treetops of the small circling Moon Nebulae (noted for being green, pleasant, and orbiting a totally unimpressive planet), pausing occasionally over an oddly- fenced area. "Seems none of them are out at the moment," Hammock said, glancing out a window. "A pity, but I guess you'll see plenty on the tour." "What's that guy down there with the briefcase?" Malykk asked, peering out the window over his glasses. Curious, I walked over to the window, jaw dropping. "My god... it's... it's..." "An auto-accident claims attorney, yes," Hammock said. "I thought they were extinct!" "You'll find many surprises here," Hammock said, as the hovership started banking. "For instance, see that flock over there?" "My god..." I said... "Mailmen! But there hasn't been a single mailman since FAXing and fiber optic data transmission became the norm!" "Every one of them a genuine artifact." "What, they're not just actors dressed up in silly outfits?" Malykk said. "No. I shall explain how we found actual mailmen later." "Isn't that guy over there Sean Connery?" Clara said, pointing to an actor in a tasteful outfit lounging on a nearby rock. "That's a bit harder to explain," Hammock said. "And there's Clint Eastwood... Whoopi Goldberg... and... Ted Kennedy?" "Well, we figured the Political Asylum area might get the best draw," Hammock said. "Alright. I for one want to know exactly how you managed to drag these people back from the dead." "Cloning!" Hammock gleefully said. "Welcome... to 20th Century Park." "What a silly name." "Shut up." * "I still don't understand," I pleaded with Hammock as we disembarked in front of an authentic replica of a mini-mall. "How on Earth could you clone dead people?" "I recently acquired a lab," Hammock said, "A lab and some equipment which were abandoned for no apparent reason on HappiWerld. Inside, I found cloning gear, and tissue samples from famous people in the 20th century. Only two samples, Hitler and Dan Quayle, were missing. Using my financial backing, I created this theme park based on the long, lost past of Terra. The time of rock and roll, muscle cars, and Sony radios." "I don't like the looks of this at all," Malykk said. "You're messing with time. You're taking people and things long forgotten and putting them back in the mix. You were so interested in how to do it that you ignored if you SHOULD do it." "Actually, I don't care how it's done," Hammock said. "As long as the checks roll in and the kids are happy, so am I." "Kids?" I inquired. "Grandpa!" shouted a kiddie voice from behind me. Another urchin, this one of the female persuasion, jumped into view. "When are we gonna get to see Bill Gates? You promised!" "Ah yes, the Giants of Industry section. Seems the tour jeeps are already here... shall we?" "Shall we what?" "Get in them, obviously." "Oh. Yeah." * I tried to avoid her gaze, but it was a bit hard. She was the sort of adorable little moppet that made you wonder if they had just come back from a photo shoot with a greeting card company. "Hi. I'm Sandy. What's your name?" "Alain," I said. "Mr. Fund to you." "That's a nice name. Did you see these computers they've got installed in the jeep?" "No." "They've got a touch screen and a voice interface and a laserROM player and everything!" "Gosh." "And to your right," the computerized voice said, "You should see the Peace Plateau section of our park, with such notable people as Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Sister Theresa." "Any reason why there's an electric shock field set up on either side of the road?" Malykk asked Hammock. "Eh?" "Well, these are just people, right?" Malykk said. "What, would they rush out and tip the jeep over after the Bulls win or something?" "There are reasons," Hammock grumbled. "..and it's got digital synth voice playback and a MIDI output interface and..." Sandy continued to herself, ignoring everybody around her. "I do have one question," Clara said. "We were still pretty high up in the hovership, right? How is it we were able to see the people in such detail?" "Well, we did a bit of genetic manipulation and developed the clones to be about thirty feet high," Hammock said. "This makes them easier to see, obviously." "Now entering Musical Lane," the computer said, as the jeep continued through another unimpressive forest and grassland area. "How come we can't see any clones out there?" I asked. "Well, it seems they stay away from the fences," Hammock explained. "They don't seem to enjoy bumping into them. Gives a bit of a shock. We're working on ways to lure them there when the tour jeeps go by." The jeep lurched to a stop. All the overhead lights along the side of the road went out, and the blue shimmer of the shock fields vanished. "Oh dear," Hammock said. "Power outage. I thought they had that bug out of the system by now... Hmmm. Bad place for it too." "Bad place? We're in Musical Lane. Is John Lennon going to try to bite our heads off or something?" "Well... there is one problem with the cloning equipment..." "Namely?" A large rock hurtled from the bushes, thunking against the roof of the car. In the foliage, a grinning, twenty foot tall Elvis was seen. "The cloning process sort of flip-flops your personality," Hammock said. Before I could enquire as to what that meant, a pair of sequined legs walked by the front of the car. The mammoth figure leaned down, hair oil dripping, and peered into the car with a confused gaze, one lip slightly arched. "Don't move... they're attracted to movement," Hammock said. "What a perfect time for those fences to fail." "It's just Elvis," Clara said. "No, actually it's an evil, psychotic rampaging version of Elvis," Hammock said. "Flip-flop, I'm afraid. One of the bugs we couldn't get out of the system. He might leave us alone; if we stalled in Peace Plateau we might have been dead by now." Sandy turned around from the jeep's computer monitor at precisely the wrong time. "Who's the fat man with the shiny clothes, Alain?" Elvis backed up, eyebrows furrowing and eyes squinting. "I think he heard you, Sandy," I whispered back. "You know," Malykk said, "This reminds me of an interesting aspect of chaos theory--" Before Malykk could continue with his scientific lecture, Elvis picked up the car and placed it in a twenty-foot high tree for better access. Sure, there was screaming and mayhem and general terror in the car, but that's perfectly acceptable considering the circumstances. Elvis was attempting to get the door open, quite possibly to eat us, but found our dinky car door handles a bit hard to open with fingers 8 inches in diameter. We were lucky he still thought relatively like a human; any normal monstrosity would rip the door off. Even over the screaming, I managed to hear about six WHIZZ noises... Elvis jerked, spasmed, and then regained his angry composure. I couldn't quite see around him, but it appeared as if he was trying to step on something. With a slight CREEEEAK noise, much like a tree falling over, Elvis gave in to gravity and slammed against the road with a THUMP that shook the land. The crowd inside the car relaxed. "Mou'lldar," Hammock sighed. "Right on time." The door opened, a massive Ytt with one of those odd cowboy hats with one side pushed up filling the doorframe. "Everything alright in here, gov?" "We're okay. Mou'lldar, this is Alain, Clara, and Malykk, the experts I had mentioned. I believe you know my granddaughter Sandy." "Miss," he said, bowing as well as one twenty feet up in a tree could. "We'll have to climb down, gov. That beastie's got this thing stuck in the tree quite well." "I think I broke my leg," Malykk whined. "Get me some pain killer or something." "You didn't," Clara said. "Hammock's sitting on it." "I am?" Hammock said. "Whoops. Sorry. Couldn't find my seat in all the confusion." * The second jeep Mou'lldar had rode in on was a bit smaller, bit with a bit of squeezing and pushing, we managed to fit inside. "Figured you guys would be in trouble when the systems went down," Mou'lldar said, piloting the jeep along the roadway. He had the pedal to the floor, which meant the jeep would tip slightly to the left and right when it took corners, but he didn't seem to care. It was either that or be attacked by more rejects from the 20th century. "Remember that guy you employed to handle the computer system?" "Nerdy? That nice Murflan chap?" Hammock answered. "Righty. Apparently he was pursuing his hobby of systems hacking on company time in VOSNet, and didn't make it back with his brain in one piece." "I warned him not to fool with that stuff," Hammock said. "Anyway, he's busy relearning his motor skills in the infirmary now," Mou'lldar said. "Problem is that the systems went out... AGAIN... a little while back, as you know, and only he knows the startup sequence." "What idiot put one person in charge of the entire computer control system?" Malykk accused. "This idiot," Hammock said. "Hats off to you, then," Malykk said. "Your park is in ruins and we might not leave alive thanks to you." "Nobody said anything about dying," Clara said. "All we have to do is turn the blasted thing on and that's that, right?" "Err, no," Hammock said. "There are a few dozen subsystems that have to be launched and such, routines to be initialized, generators for the fences to be prepped, ekcetera. I'm afraid nobody here really know enough about computers to do it." "I can help! I can help! Kin I help? Please? Please? Huh? Huh?" Sandy said, bouncing on her seat. "Oh PLEASE, let her help," Malykk groaned. "Anything. I'd like to get back to my relatively peaceful office as soon as possible." * The visitor's center wasn't quite completed. A few portraits hung on the walls, and various lifesize mockups of criminals, politicians, and actors leaned against the walls. "So where's the computer control room?" I asked. "It should be behind those doors," Hammock said, pointing to an odd wooden slab embedded in the wall. "Where's the touchpad?" Malykk asked. "It works on the doorknob mechanism," Hammock boasted. "We replicated the ordinary 20th century brass doorknob perfectly. I spared no expense." "Hey, mister!" boomed a loud, but high pitched voice from behind us. A portion of the wall collapsed, dust billowing briefly before the monstrous visions were upon us. "My god... it's..." "Would you like a box of my DELICIOUS Girl Scout cookies?" the ten foot high, overly cheery and overly green-clad girl said. "Special today. Buy ten boxes and I might not rip you in half!" "Flip-flopping," Mou'lldar growled. "Gotta love it." "I suggest a quick retreat to the control center?" I said, before realizing the party had already beat a retreat for the door. "How do I open it? How to I open it?" Malykk said, poking at the odd doorknob thing. "It's not responding to fingerprints!" "You turn it!" Mou'lldar said, trying to load tranquilizer darts into his gun. "It's a simple machine!" "It's not opening!" "You turn it AND pull." Malykk stumbled backwards as the odd wooden portal swung open, and then bolted inside. I followed, the only other option being dealing with an insane clone of a long-dead eight year old. Mou'lldar PUFFed a dart out the door, which missed wildly before the door slammed shut. "How do I lock it?" "You twist that raised bit at the end of the knob," Mou'lldar explained. "Computer center's this way," Hammock prodded. There was another episode of mad rushing about, and bing, everybody was now inside the control room. The place was a mess, a bizarre mutant lifeform that was half silicon, half twinkie wrapper. Whoever worked here was either pregnant with fifty eight children or was feeding an HAAFF carrier for two years. "Alright, Sandy, get started on the system. Shouldn't someone be closing that door?" Clara nodded, moving to close it. An enormous hand blocked her path. "It's not NIIIIICE to slam the door onna guest!" the girl scout chirped, trying to force the door open. Malykk and Mou'lldar were helping Clara try to close the door, but it was obvious that the ten foot moppet would probably win in the end. "We can automatically shut and lock the doors if the system is running," Hammock said, looking for a good place to hide. "Sandy? If you'd please turn this damn thing on?" I prodded. "Look for the door locking program." Sandy nodded, clicking on a monitor. "SUNOS UNIX (4.11)" flashed up on the screen. "This is a UNIX system! I kn... uh... is this a Connection Machine architecture? Uhoh." "Uhoh? Whaddya mean uhoh?" "No, no, I think I can find it... hmm. apropos locks... funny, no related keywords..." "Nerdy wasn't exactly known for user friendly programs," Hammock said, piling office furniture in front of him. "After all, he was the only person who used them." "No man entries. I'll check /usr/local/bin... nothing... maybe... ah! /usr/local/adm/security/bin! No, wait." "What? WHAT?!?" Clara shouted over the giggling of the girl scout. "Lesse. Objects lock1, lock2, lock3, lock4, lock5... up to lock567..." Sandy read off. "Which one's the control room lock?!" "No problem, I'll just grep for the string 'control'. Shouldn't take more than twenty minutes. Unless he put the strings only in his C source comments. Maybe a few hours, then. Of course, this is a CM, so grep might not work at all--" "Just buy the damn cookies, already!" I shouted to the trio attempting to keep the door closed. "We'll take ten! No! Twenty boxes of the most expensive cookies you've got!" Clara shouted to the girl scout. She stopped prying at the door. "Great! That'll be fifty bucks, American." "Here's my credit chip. Take as much as you want," I said, handing out the thin plastic wafer." "I don't take credit cards, mister," the Scout said. "Okay, anybody here got 20th century currency?" I asked. There was a patting of pockets and a few nervous glances around the room, which meant, on the whole, no. "Can we take an IOU?" "GRRRR--" "Okay! Okay. No IOUs. Umm." "Well... I do have a hundred dollar bill I've been saving as a souvenir," Hammock said. "It's a bit old an crinkly, though." He pulled out the extremely ragged slip of clothlike paper, ink smudged, but the face of a dead president clearly visible. "How's this, little girl?" I said, handing the bill to her. "It's a bit yucky," she said. "But it'll do." "Keep the change," I said, as the lumbering figure stomped back down the hall. * "So that's it?" Clara said, as we packed up the hovership. "We're leaving?" "Well, we can't get the systems online until we can find a UNIX guru, or reprogram the whole thing, or something," Mou'lldar said. "I can't say I'll miss this place, though." THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. "What was that?" I said, looking around the horizon nervously. "Sounded like thump, thump, thump," Clara said. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. "There it is again," I said. "Maybe we'd best get moving--" Without warning (well, other than the six previous thumps) a larger-than-life version of Oprah Winfrey plowed through the trees. "Good lord! She's... huge!" "What's so strange about that?" I asked, before Clara bopped me one on the head. Oof. "Who's that chasing her?" Malykk asked. "Looks like... Phil Donahue..." Sure enough, the two talk show hosts appeared to be locked in mortal combat of some kind, swiping at each other with huge microphones. "We made those mikes, you know," Hammock sighed. "Spared no expense." "As I was saying," I repeated, "Maybe we ought to get moving--" CRASH! "Alright," I said, since my back as to the sound of the crash, "What was that?" "Oprah just fell on the control center," Malykk said. "So much for recovering the park, unless someone really wants to go in there and try to set up an entirely new computer network while various media figures are stomping all over the place." "I hate failed investments," Hammock said. "Reminds me of this one law of chaos theory--" "Can we PLEASE leave now?" I said. "Last thing we need is for Geraldo to step on our only escape route." * We never did return to 20th Century Park. A warning beacon was set up by the Terran Confederation, suggesting that unless you want your face ripped off by monsters from beyond the grave, you should probably avoid this moon. The money Hammock promised us did come in handy, as we unearthed an entire farmhouse which was covered in sedimentary mud and rock from the floods of 1993 and were able to open an exhibit in the Galactic Museum of History on HappiWerld. I've considered going back there occasionally, even if only to loot the place for the massive amount of replicated 20th century artifacts it held. Then again, maybe I have a sense of self preservation after all. Well, enjoy life, and remember these simple rules. One, don't mess with the past, or your future will be quite short. Two, never accept a bribe without reading the fine print, and three, doorknobs are pretty silly things when you think about it.