Within Dreams
Warning klaxons blared in Development Lab No. 4. The massive chamber went dark, then became bathed in red light as the reactor complex's power went through emergency rerouting. A four-armed, bipedal creature sat in front of a computer terminal. His skin was a deep red and the top of his head was flat, covered in a thin layer of black hair. He wore a black vest, ragged pants, a watch on each wrist, and a dark pair of sunglasses. The creature was the only living being in the room, but he knew that that was about to change.
Getting up from his seat, he hurriedly stuffed some papers and data storage materials into a bag he was carrying. He ran along the chamber's catwalks to the south door before he met a squad of slug-like security guards who were less than happy to see him. "There he is!" the lead guard yelled, and they reached for their stun guns.
The creature quickly reversed direction, but then noticed a second squad coming from the other side. Thinking quickly, he flipped a switch on the side of his bag, which promptly sprouted small rocket boosters and wings; then he tossed the bag aside, and it flew to the top of the chamber. He hit a button on one of his watches and held it up in the air - showing a 20-second countdown.
"I'd get out of here if I were you," the creature yelled in a strained voice, staring up at the countdown.
The guards looked at each other. "He's got a bomb!" one of them yelled. The room began to shake, and small bits of debris fell from the ceiling. The guards quickly dispersed from the room's exits. The creature just stood still, staring at his watch as it ticked down the seconds.
It met three seconds and beeped. Part of the catwalk became dislodged from the wall, and a section of the walkway fell into the deep chasm below.
Two seconds. The watch beeped again. An iron beam fell onto the terminal the creature had just been sitting at, destroying it completely.
One second. Another beep was drowned out by a loud grinding noise coming from the depths of the chamber. The red warning light shattered, plunging the room into darkness.
The countdown hit zero. A yellow light suddenly came from below the creature, and filled the chamber. The creature looked down to see a large robotic hand rushing upward; he jumped into it from the crumbling catwalk. He opened a small door in the hand's palm, crawled in, and closed it behind him.
Outside, slug security personnel and white-coated slug scientists ran frantically to the edges of the reactor complex. Building number 4 was rapidly falling apart. Out from the billowing dust and crumbling debris rose a tall and imposing robot, dwarfing the majority of the complex's standing structures.
Two guards in a nearby security tower stared at the robot. It sat on a mammoth treaded moving assembly, had two large arms, and was topped with a highly decorated head: the control center of the machine.
"You think that's him?" one guard asked the other, referring to the spy reportedly seen in lab 4.
"I sure hope so," the other one replied, "because if that's someone else, there's no telling what the other guy is doing."
The robot reached out and grabbed the flying bag that the four-armed creature had previously sent off. Then it moved forward a few hundred feet, crushing assorted mailboxes and street lamps, and punched its left hand straight into the ground.
"What's it doing?" one of the tower guards wondered aloud.
The other guard looked down at the floor and sighed. "When the complex goes into emergency lockdown," he explained, "the reactor core is moved underground. Right now, he's right above where the core should be."
A few seconds passed. The robot brought its hand back up, holding a large white block. The block gave off an eerie ethereal glow. Inside the robot's head, the four-armed creature used one of his hands to call up a communications screen on his cockpit's button-coated dashboard.
"Got it," he said abruptly at the screen.
The face of a trim, young-looking, red-haired human woman appeared on the screen. "Mike?" it said.
The creature was confused. That doesn't look like headquarters' espionage chief, he thought.
"Wake up, Mike," the woman continued. "Mike, wake up."
The creature looked up at the reactor block sitting in his robot's hand. Without warning, the block suddenly exploded, and he could see nothing but a blank white.
"Mike?" The woman, wearing a business suit and a name badge that said 'Michelle,' shook Mike's shoulder. The middle-aged man was slumped on the floor, asleep. Mike slowly opened his eyes.
Michelle pulled her arm back and put her hands on her hips. "She kicked you out again," she said, more of an assumption than a question.
Mike groggily reached up and combed his hand through his matted black hair. "I had the strangest dream, Mish," he said, still only half awake. "I was this thing, with four arms," he explained, "and I was breaking into a power plant... taking their reactor... with a giant robot..."
Michelle looked up at the fluorescent-lighted ceiling and sighed out loud. "You're working yourself too hard," she asserted.
Mike blinked his eyes a few times. He gradually stood up and looked around, noticing he was in a small, white room. Each wall had a blue couch against it, but he had fallen asleep in the center of the floor. Aside from the couches, and a door in one corner of the room, it was completely empty.
He looked down at himself, noticing he was wearing pajamas with pictures of space shuttles on them. "Which lounge is this?" he asked, slowly remembering where he was. The Federal Dynamic Research (FDR) building had many sections, and each one had a room exactly like this for the sole purpose of relaxing and getting away from a project for a few minutes. The designers hadn't really anticipated someone spending the night in one, though.
"You're right outside the firing range," Michelle said, pointing to the corner door. Mike nodded and suddenly began to hear the rather loud gunshots.
"But why would I-" Mike began, then noticed a bulky revolver in his right hand. He remembered that one of his current projects was an agile, heat-seeking bullet.
"Don't worry, I emptied the clip before I tried waking you up," Michelle said. "And I didn't see any bullet holes nearby."
Mike ran his hand through his hair again. "I think... I think I came to work on my projects because my wife yelled me out of the house," he said.
Michelle sighed again. "Your wife kicks you out because you work too much, and you work too much because your wife kicks you out," she mused out loud, though it wasn't the first time she'd said so. "It's a vicious cycle."
"I don't know what else to do." Mike stuffed the revolver in the elastic of his pajama pants. "I'll deal with it later. What are you doing here?" he asked. Mike was on research and development, but Michelle was what the scientists called (though never to their faces) a Guinea Pig, who the government hired to field-test new gadgets. Mike had known Michelle for three weeks, the longest he'd ever known a Guinea Pig before its contract 'ran out.'
"I'm supposed to try out a bionic suit," she said. "The chiefs told me to find you. You're supposed to come along and take notes."
Asking researchers to accompany a tester in the field was a rare occurrence, but it happened every once in a while, usually when a device wasn't expected to work (another thing never mentioned to the Guinea Pigs). He and Michelle talked about the assignment, and Mike left to get changed into his generic white lab coat.
Several hours and several helicopter trips later, Mike and Michelle arrived at a vacant factory building. Mike was talking into his transponder watch with one of the research chiefs back at FDR.
"So this is the obstacle course?" Mike said.
"Yes, Michael," the chief replied. "We've refitted this manufacturing plant with a bunch of conveyor belts, swinging hammers, saws, pistons, and other things like that. It also makes soda cans, but we don't really need those."
Mike whispered, "Is there anything I should be looking for?"
The chief lowered his voice. "The lab's done a pretty good job," he said. "Almost everything works perfectly. But they're not sure about the ... what did they call it... the uh, something, it works like a gecko's feet, grips onto a sheer surface. Everything else should be okay though."
"Alright," Mike said, "sure thing. I'll get back to you when we're done." He looked up at Michelle, still in her business attire. "Where's the suit?" Mike had heard of the bionic performance enhancement suit, but had never actually seen it.
Michelle dug around in her pocket and pulled out a wristwatch. "Why do you guys always make these things watches?"
Mike chuckled. "It's not finished until you can make it into a watch," he said.
Michelle shrugged and put the watch on her left wrist. She turned a small knob on one side, and a dark green material came shooting out of either side of the watch. It covered her hand, then went under the sleeve of her shirt and vanished. A moment later it was covering her neck, face, and right hand. She jumped a bit. "It's cold!" she exclaimed through a small hole where her mouth was.
Mike blinked and let out an audible "huh?" Michelle shivered for a bit, then slowly reached down and undid her pants.
"Michelle!" Mike yelled. "What are you doing?"
Michelle stripped out of her clothing to show that the dark green material was covering her entire body, except for her eyes and mouth. "Look," she said. The suit was skin-tight, and very much so. Mike blushed.
"What's the matter," Michelle asked, "afraid your wife might be unhappy with you?" Michelle made a pose and giggled.
Mike grunted. "Alright, let's get this show on the road," he said, and walked toward the factory doors. Michelle started running, and found herself past Mike in less than a second.
"Whoa!" She screeched to a halt right in front of the doors. "This could take some getting used to."
Talk about an understatement, Mike thought to himself.
Michelle was bounding around on the factory floor as Mike stood up in the control room and observed the suit's capabilities. Two hours had passed.
Mike talked into a microphone. "Okay, Mish, we've done just about everything," he said over the factory loudspeaker, looking down at his checklist. Dozens of the suit's features, from camouflage to weaponry, had passed the recommended tests with flying colors. "I'd hate to have to be the one to rebuild this factory," Mike joked.
Michelle looked up at the control room. "We're not done yet, are we?" she shouted. She speedily cartwheeled around the floor.
Mike looked at the bottom of his checklist. There was one item left, the gripping mechanism that the chief had told him to look out for. "One more thing," he said. "There's a gripping mechanism, for hanging on to flat surfaces and walls. Just-"
"I'm on it," Michelle yelled back. She leapt up to a high point of the factory, then jumped to one of the walls with her hands out in front. She slammed into the wall forcefully, but her hands held fast to the wall.
Mike laughed. "You okay up there?" he asked through the speaker.
Michelle removed her left hand from the wall, hanging only by her right. She gave Mike a one-fingered hand gesture to indicate that she was doing just fine.
"Alright," Mike said. "Now try to maneuver along the wall. See if your feet will stick," he suggested.
Michelle stuck both of her feet to the wall, then started to crawl on her hands and feet along the walls. She did some acrobatics, flipping off the wall by her feet and catching herself with her hands a few feet down.
Mike let out a sigh of relief and checked the 'Gripping Mechanism' box on his sheet. It looked like it was working fine. "That's it," he said into the loudspeaker. "We're done."
Indifferent to Mike's announcement, Michelle continued climbing around the room. "Mish? We're done," he said again.
"Let me have my fun!" she yelled. Michelle pounced from the wall and clung onto the ceiling. She slowly let her hands go and dangled down from her feet, standing upside-down on the ceiling. She made an inverted bow to Mike in the control room.
"Good job," he responded, "but you might want to get out of the way of that saw." A spinning buzzsaw on a long mechanical arm made its way around the ceiling of the room, and was headed directly for where Michelle was standing.
She glanced at it, then waved at Mike. Her feet detached from the ceiling. As she fell, Michelle tried to right herself, but didn't quite make it; she landed on her back on the hard cement.
Mike put down the microphone and ran down to the factory floor. He found Michelle sitting on her knees, rubbing her head.
Mike kneeled down beside her. "You look alright," he observed, surprised to find how well the suit could absorb impacts.
Michelle glared at him. "Thanks for asking," she said. She glanced behind Mike, and her eyes opened wide.
Mike turned around just in time to see a large metal piston hurtling towards his head.
*CLANG*
"Ouch!" Mike exclaimed. He opened his eyes and saw the blunt end of a frying pan hovering above his head. "I'm awake! I'm awake!" he yelled.
The frying pan moved aside to reveal the face of Mike's roommate, Ron. "Good," Ron said with a grim expression. "We're under attack."
"What!?" Mike haphazardly got out of bed and dressed himself, quickly slapping a utility watch on each of his four worn wrists. He probably got them mixed up, but if headquarters was under attack, he didn't have much time to worry about that. "How did they find us?" Mike asked, slipping his black combat vest on.
"Apparently one of our recent thefts was actually a covert tracking device," Ron said. "They've been on to us for some time now."
Mike pulled on his ragged pants. "What kind of forces do they have?"
"Just enough to make it difficult." Ron pulled an aerial photograph out of his pocket and handed it to Mike, then walked towards the door. "There's no way we can outrun them, and the HQ defenses are no match. We need to meet them head-on."
Mike examined his watches to make sure he knew which was which. "Alright. I hope they finished the repairs."
"Me too." Ron and Mike left their room for the giant robot hangar.
Mike shook his head as he jogged through the corridors. "I know this isn't the best time, but I had the strangest dream..."