Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, part 6

 I didn't quite have time to get anything new ready today, so here's another installment of Sidekick Carl that was taking longer to get together. While I'm at it, here's a link for the last installment.

Carl found himself in the midst of a haze; that much was always the same. From out of the fog, a shape appeared and then emerged. It was a figure, seemingly human, all in black, except that the face was hidden by a mask with a long bill. Then the figure raised a hand, revealing a four-fingered talon. The attacker slashed once, then suddenly shot into the air on a pair of wings that unfolded from its back. Even as it vanished, two more figures appeared. One was Basiliskus, his scales glimmering with a certain sheen that had been fading at the time of his final defeat. Carl instantly knew the other as Dr. Hydro. His upper torso was encased in a cylindrical breast plate, while his limbs were encased in a combination of armored plating and pleated plastic. He could just see the outline of a head behind the tinted dome that covered his head.

It was Basiliskus who struck first, with a blow that tore Carl in half. His upper body thudded to the ground ten feet from his pelvis and legs, which teetered a moment before collapsing. Between the two halves was a trail of tubing and strange, vaguely machine-like organs that visibly writhed in an effort to repair and reunite. Dr. Hydro advanced. “I created you,” his oddly rasping voice intoned. “I gave you your life, to advance my work. But you are a stepping stone, not the final product. Now my work is cut short, and you are just a remnant of what might have been. It is time for the experiment to end.” As he spoke, an enormous blade extended from his forearm.

“No,” Carl said. “Whatever you meant to do, you built me to survive, well enough that I outlived you.” He struggled to crawl away, only to be dragged back by the trail of tubes that still held him together.

“Listen to him,” Basiliskus said. “It is the end. The end of all things.” Carl struggled to crawl further, and got just far enough to touch the foot of a newcomer. He craned his neck to behold one figure ant then another, both clad in yellow with gas masks over their faces. Behind the eyepieces of the mask was only a deep, throbbing red glow. The glow flared brighter, until everything but the bare outlines of the figures faded into a field of pure red. Then there was a swish as blade swung, and Carl’s view became a whirling blur as his head went tumbling away from his body.

He seemed to awake surrounded in pure light. He tried to see if he was whole, but could not move. At last, he called out, “Are you God?” The answer came in far more than words: No, just us…

 

***

Carl sat up as he came awake. He was on a cot that flexed under his weight. A quick touch confirmed his helmet was back on. It took only another moment to reconstruct his surroundings as an upper berth of the Nine Foot Woman’s motorhome, part of a superstructure that had once been the upper part of a whole camper van. His bunk was part of a popup tent that deployed from the hinged van roof, with an unzipped flap above serving as a privacy curtain. Only then did he belatedly see the woman herself, looking up at him from just below the level of the bunk.

“You were making some noise in your sleep,” Dana said. It was only then that he saw that she was clothed only in a bathrobe that reached about halfway down her hips. From his viewpoint almost directly above, it hid even less of her figure. She smiled and made a small but decisive adjustment. “You weren’t too loud, and I was going in and out anyway.” She sat back down on a dinette on the far side of the motorhome. Carl climbed down from overhead using a ladder affixed to one of the overhead bins clustered where the van shell met the cab of the bus, originally the rear rather than the front of the van.

“Thanks for staying,” she said. “I know I laid a lot on you. I just hope that wasn’t what was giving you a hard time.”

Carl shook his head. “It was a dream I’ve had for a long time. It doesn’t really happen often.”

“Well, you can sit here with me if it helps,” she said. He sat down beside her, and removed his helmet. He did not withdraw when she put an arm around him.

“I just need to know something,” he said. “Did you really mean what you said about… getting married?” It was the same question he had asked over several hours before they went to sleep.

“Engaged,” she said. “Or on that track, anyway. We’d still take our time, of course. Do things, get to know each other. It’s really just a matter of being intentional about it. I’m that kind of girl. A little old fashioned, but I’m willing to go for what I want.”

“I can tell,” Carl said. He added neutrally, “By the way, where are we?”

“About an hour’s drive from the convention center,” Dana said. “It’ll be an hour or before you can see what I wanted to show you. We can talk till then, if you want to.”

“I wanted to ask,” Carl said. “You told me you’re under a code of conduct with the Tall People Association. Are you worried what they’ll say about this?”

Dana gave a laugh that literally rattled the fixtures. “They won’t be happy, but this is nothing they could do anything about,” she said. “As for the con crowd, they’d be more scandalized if they knew I proposed to you than if they think I slept with you.” She stretched out full length with a sigh and a more calculated smile. “By the way, if you want to talk about a timetable for that, I’m willing to hear you out.”

Carl shook his head. “It’s… complicated. I… I guess you could say I’m… functional. The doctors say I could probably even have children. I’ll tell you more, when you need to know. Let’s just say it would have to be... different.”

Dana just nodded. “I can live with that,” she said. “I just want to know, what really happened with  Audrey?”

He hesitated, but still answered without further reservation. “There’s a kind of housing,” he said. “When she bit me, she hit it. Then she hit, kind of… a power supply.”

For a moment, Dana was silent. Then her cheeks flushed as a smile spread. Finally, she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I’m not laughing at you, really, I’m not, I’m just getting a picture…” She started laughing again, louder than before.

 

After a while, Dana put on one of her jumpsuits, and they went to the cab. The front section had been reconfigured more drastically than the rest of the vehicle. The steps that went up from the boarding doors had been removed entirely, allowing the floor to be lowered to within inches of the bottom of the 10-foot-tall main hull. That, in turn, provided room for a stool-like seat where Dana perched more than sat, nearly upright. Carl seated himself on a more conventional seat that unfolded beside it. The light of near-dawn was enough to see a gleaming engine cowling in front of them. Beyond that was the looming darkness of a rock face, split by a slit of light. “I’ve been curious,” he said, “who made this?”

“It was practically made by committee,” Dana said. “I got it… 18 years ago, now. I was 17, and I’d already been doing bike shows for a couple years. I was sleeping in an oversized semi trailer when I was on the road. I finally told my sponsors I needed something I could live in. They wanted it to do the whole junkyard look, but almost everything was new. A bus company gave us the body and chassis, straight from the factory without a roof. A custom RV crew set up the interior, and my crew put in the wheels and suspension. Even the silly van shell, we got that from a salvage yard in Europe, still replaced a lot of it with plexiglass. And see that cowling? It doesn’t do anything. We had an experimental compact diesel engine, natural gas/ electric now, but the advertisers kept saying the audience needed to see something… And I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I?”

Carl just shrugged. “I could tell you care about it,” he said.

They kept talking, and the conversation got more personal. She talked about being 5 foot 6 in elementary school. He talked about things like going through customs in a republic where a mutated creature had installed itself as dictator. Meanwhile, the light grew brighter, until Dana cried out in surprise, “Look!”

Ahead of them, the sun had just started to come into view in the slot canyon ahead. Its light was a reddish orange, nearly the same hue as the rocks. As the sun rose, the light became gold, illuminating one side of the canyon brilliantly white. That was when Dana leaned out  the window and gave a ululating call that echoed back from the canyon. She looked over her shoulder at Carl, and saw a sublime smile on his face.

“Listen,” she said as she slid back into her seat, “I’m sorry I laid things on you like that. It was a feeling, and I won’t say it’s gone, but I can tell now, you weren’t ready to hear it. I just hope it doesn’t change things.”

Carl shrugged. “Honestly, it’s been a long time since I thought of being with someone at all,” he said. “I just need time… Are you okay?”

A pained expression had suddenly come to her face. After a moment, she said, “No.” She began to squirm in place. She turned to meet Carl’s gaze. Tears were already running down her cheeks. “It’s my back. I shouldn’t have done this… Not without Jenny.”

“I’m a physical therapist,” Carl said. “I’m sure I can help.”

Dana just shook her head. “I have syringes and pain killers, in the drawer up there,” she said, burying her face to the steering wheel. “It won’t stop it, but it will make it better. A little.”

Carl nodded, then removed his gloves. He squeezed her hand the smooth flesh of his left hand, then pressed his glassy right hand to her palm. She smiled wanly. Her eyes widened as his fingers lengthened, and then began to hum.

A while later, Dana lay face down on the dinette, unclothed and uncovered except for a sheet draped across her lower body. When she raised her face, she was smiling blissfully. “What do you think,” she said, “about very short engagements?”