The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 9!

 For this week, I'm trying to work ahead, and decided on a little Sidekick Carl to fill the gap. Here's the links for the first and previous chapters, and for my Hot Wheels monster cars post.

The object was just over 3 feet long. Its shape was still recognizable as a reptilian head, but the only clear details were the glowing blue-green eye and the grimacing translucent teeth. In places, its color could be made out, a deep reddish-purple unpleasantly akin to uncooked meat. The greater part was hopelessly obscured by corrosion and encrusting clams and barnacles. A light flickered from inside the immobile mouth as it spoke. “This is my humiliation,” it said. “Not that I was defeated, not even that I am forgotten, but that I should depend on the likes of you…”

The Toxo Warriors discretely glanced at each other, and the one who usually took the initiative shrugged. “You agreed to an equal partnership,” he said. “We obtained the raw materials, you agreed to provide your technical expertise. We could try to move forward without you, but you’re going nowhere without us.”

“Do not think I am without means, even now,” the head countered. “There was a time when I gave orders to hundreds of your kind, who knew nothing of me save to fear me. If you dissatisfy me, there are others who would do my bidding.”

“Yes,” the second Warrior chimed in, “but how many of them could handle Solvent G without ending up a puddle?”

“I do not deny, you are the best,” the head rumbled. “Do not believe that that makes you indispensable. Now, to be sure, we plan the next phase and move forward. And in the meantime, we shall see if that fool can accomplish his mission.”

“Yes, the mission,” the first Toxo Warrior said. “Kill Sidekick Carl, and all that.” Again, the partners glanced at each other. The head’s mouth just flickered silently, in unmistakable laughter.

 

***

Carl and Dana returned to the RV just after dark. She started laughing about something neither of them would remember, and he followed suit as they climbed the steps to the rear deck. They continued to laugh as Dana opened the rear door. Suddenly, she picked up Carl as if to carry him over the threshold. She set him down, laughing harder. That was when Carl put his arms around her waist. She gave a cry of surprise as he picked her up. With a little further effort, he raised her overhead, straining his balance more than his strength. She gave a gleeful whoop, then instinctively ducked her head as she came close to one of the struts for the awning-like shell overhead. Carl set her down, and she stepped inside, leaning forward as she went through the door. The corridor jogged sharply to the right as they passed the bathroom door. Carl glanced inside before following.

As he emerged from the corridor into the living area, he saw the now-familiar dinette and kitchen. What he didn’t see was Dana. He felt a momentary confusion that would not have greatly troubled him if he had not also felt a vague but unmistakable sense of impending danger. He peered ahead into the cab, and started to glance over his shoulder. Then he looked up into the van shell above, just as a looming figure came swinging down. He had just enough time and forethought to raise his arms before two powerful limbs wrapped around his torso. He was lifted, dropped and then pinned to the floor as a heavier body followed. There was a moment of darkness as a powerful hands twisted his helmet with just the right motion to undo the seal. He found himself looking up at Dana, who smiled down. “Will you marry me?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. As he spoke, it felt less like accepting a proposal than admitting the inevitable. Her deceptively large fingers had already found a tiny button at his throat. The suit split open all at once, from his collar down to his pelvis. She matter-of-factly began pushing back the suit,  shifting to peer at what was revealed.

Beneath the suit was a translucent skin that looked like wax paper, with opaque patches at the shoulders, elbows and, as she soon found, his knees. Between his legs was an off-white plastic component that could have been taken for a protective cup. She tapped it with one finger. Carl tensed as she stroked a protuberance in the center, vaguely like the phallus of a bull in profile. At the tip was a rubbery gasket. She touched the center almost tentatively. “What’s this?” she said.

“It’s… you could call it a release valve,” Carl said. “Most of the time, the nanites recycle my… wastes, fluids, what have you. With the changes they made to my digestive system, there isn’t much else. Once in a while… maybe a few times a year… there’s more than they can absorbed, so they… vent.”

Dana nodded, but promptly frowned. “So does it, um, come out?”

“No,” Carl said. “That’s not how it works. The doctors say it’s like a cloaca, what you’d see on a lizard or a bird. Or like an air lock on a spaceship, if it comes to that. The nanites figured out enough about human anatomy that it can change shape, enough to, ah, fit with a woman’s body. Or a man’s, probably.”

Dana just looked at him intently. “The thing is… the thing is,” Carl said, “when the pressure builds up, it, it…” He took a deep breath and finished. “It buzzes.” There was another moment of silence. The next, Dana was literally rolling on the floor laughing.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It’s just… Oh my God, those little machines really don’t get us, do they?” She sank down, laughing louder than before. Finally, she rose to a crouch. “I told you, I’m an old-fashioned girl. Well, mostly. I definitely can’t give it all to you, while we’re still just engaged. Mmm, at least not more than once.” 

She straddled him at the waist. “Still… it seems to me, there’s a lot we  can do. Enough to figure out what that buzzer can do.” She reached behind her back and undid the critical knot of her halter top. Then for a while, they did not talk, but continued to laugh.

It seemed to Carl that they were still in each other’s arms when he found himself in the midst of the white. He rose, leaving Dana and her bed behind in the midst of the brilliant field. “Are you God?” he called out.

 

“No,” a voice answered. “Just us.” As he peered into the distance, a silhouette emerged that became a shape, then a figure. Finally, a man stood before him, a little shorter but much more robust, sporting a battered helmet and a bushy mustache that was now entirely white.

“Constructor,” Carl said. Even as he spoke, he shook his head. “But it’s not really you.”

“Come here, and sit down,” Constructor said. The white field lifted, to become the rear deck of the RV. They both sat comfortably on a bench next to the protruding rear wall of the bathroom.

“This is me, as you remember me,” Constructor said, his gruff voice a little softer than usual. “That is more than you thought you knew. In your mind, in your dreams, I still live on, older, perhaps wiser. Wise enough, anyway, to tell what’s on your mind.”

Carl gazed through the door into the RV. “She says she wants to be my wife.  It’s so soon… but I don’t suppose that’s the problem. It’s just been so long, since I even thought this could happen. After Dr. Hydro rebuilt me, I never thought of myself as a man again, so I didn’t really try. I still keep thinking, if she really knew…”

Constructor chuckled, which left him unsettled and momentarily angry. “But there’s not much left she doesn’t know, is there?” he said. “It happens. It happened to me, once upon a time, though not quite as fast. What you forgot isn’t that you’re a man, it’s that you’re still like other men. No more, certainly not less.”

They continued to talk, about old adventures, old friends and old enemies. A couple times, a shadow began to form, but a chuckle from Constructor always dispelled it. “We should have done this more often,” Carl finally said. “Before… well. Before.”

“Yes,” Constructor said. “There’s never enough time, is there? More than you might think, though, if you make the time.”

“Listen,” Carl said, “there’s something else. Someone asked me, if the Toxo Warriors were still alive. I don’t see how it could be. I don’t see how it could matter if they were. But now that I think about it, I’m just not sure.”

“Now that was from a ways back, isn’t it?” Constructor said. “Even when you went off on your own, they were water under the bridge. I can tell it’s troubling you, for you to ask about it here and now. So why don’t you tell me, now, in your dreams… Do you believe it’s true?”

Carl pondered, only a moment. “It was just a dumb kid who asked,” he said. “But then there was a man from the Agency there. You’d remember him, the man who rescued that woman while we were fighting the Raven and Goliath, he’s married to her now. I watched him, just in case he thought there was something to it. He didn’t react, at all. Then after, I talked to Audrey, about this… and he was already gone. Maybe… probably… it’s not them. But it could be something.”

Constructor nodded, and smiled. “Remember that, when you wake up,” he said. “People will ask, later, if you can get through what’s next. Be brave. Trust her. Trust yourself. Trust me. Now wake up, while you can. You’re in danger. You must wake up. Now.”

 

As he spoke, the light flared bright, until all else had faded into white. He sat up beside Dana on the converted dinette, still without his helmet or outer suit, just as something smashed through the rear door.