The Cracked Conspiracy | Writers and Readers

Oball held his head as he stared into the fog.
   The Fields of Distraction, appearing small at one time, now might as well be spread over a continent. The thick mist that swirled around him obscured time and distance. There was no direction, only this endless marsh with its seemingly sentient haze taunting him with shapes and illusions. Only the imagination-killing power of science kept him from succumbing to the temptations of its fantasies. He waged a battle in his mind, and stark reality won out for now. But he was growing so tired.
   Oball gazed into a pool of water, at a submerged and weathered skull. His reflection superimposed itself over it. He could see his own eyes peering from its eroded sockets. How long might he wander this wilderness before being reduced to just another bleached skeleton?
   "Don't give up hope, Oball." Richard Dawkins kneeled beside him. "Your time has not yet come."
   "I'm so tired, Dick," Oball replied, "For the first time, it feels... like science has forsaken me."
   "Science forsakes no man," said Charles Darwin, approaching from the mist.
   Oball turned around and saw that a small crowd had gathered around him. All familiar faces, so familiar that they could have been family. Indeed, they were family, in some strange way. All of his great mentors, gathered together like a pantheon of guiding angels.
   "Science will save you," said Stephen Hawking in a monotone computerised voice. His wheelchair struggled through the marsh as he approached, a grin on his slack, squishy face. "We have all experienced a test of faith. The problem of quantum energy and its interactions with the event horizon of a black hole seemed an insurmountable task for me. In fact, Einstein thought quantum physics was complete bullshit."
   "Oh come on, Hawking you dumb shit," Einstein protested, "You're going around telling people that there are particles floating around out there, tunneling through solid mass and being in two places at the same time? Excuse me if I prefer to live in a reality where the science textbooks aren't written by J.R.R. Fucking Tolkien."
   "Shut up, cocksmudge," Hawking replied, "You couldn't even figure out that the universe is accelerating. At least that's not as bad as Bertrand Russell thinking that the Ontological Argument was sound."
   "Yeah, I was pretty high at the time," Russell said.
   "What we're trying to say," Dawkins said, "is that you need to place your trust in science. Your science is strong, Oball. More than you know. I realise that some tasks can seem impossible, but it is at these times that you must give yourself to science totally, and trust that it will show you the way."
   "Yes," Oball said, and brought himself to his feet. "Science is the answer. Thank you all for restoring my faith-"
   But they were gone. He was alone in the swirling mist and maddening silence. He looked up at the sun, the fiery orb trailing its way across the sky, almost directly overhead, now. Perhaps he could use it to guide him. In his head, he began to make calculations, the science flowing through him with sciency energy.
   Something touched his ankle, breaking his concentration. He looked down. It was a basketball, lying out of place in this dead, muddy wasteland. Strange. He reached for it, but the ball slowly rolled away from him, bouncing over the rocks and through the wet grass. He watched it trail its way through the marsh of its own accord, until finally it leaped up into the air.
   Nicol caught it on one finger, and spun it around idly.
   "Hello, Oball."
   Somehow, Oball knew this was not merely another of the Field's illusions. He hadn't seen Nicol in a long time, but the familiarity of this otherworldly entity was unmistakable. The basketball defied gravity, spinning deftly upon his finger, and Nicol grinned, revealing a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs.
   "The puppetmaster himself appears," Oball said.
   "I saw you were lost," Nicol said, "wandering like a child left behind. It must be a terrible shock when all that you know to be true scatters like flies in the wind. Feeling a little disillusioned, Professor?"
   Oball responded only by raising his shotgun and firing directly into Nicol's chest.
   The deafening report of the weapon ripped through the silence of the marsh, and Nicol recoiled in horror.
   "Oh! You got me! You got me!" he screamed, but Oball could see that he was laughing. "You really like to cling to the rational world, don't you. You can't think beyond it. These guns, for example, such simple devices, so predictable. You just point them at what you want to die, and pull the trigger. When it doesn't work, you lose your mind! Science doesn't live here anymore, Oball. Welcome to my world. I've got home team advantage here, and we're five minutes from the bell."
   "Things must be going pretty badly for you if you're making personal visits," Oball said, "What happened, did you run out of cronies?"
   "On the contrary." Nicol dribbled the ball. It bounced perfectly on the wet sludge of the marsh floor, just another assault against what Oball knew to be rational. "Your friends are all dead, you know. Bit of a shame, I thought they'd get further. I was sort of hoping for a bit of a challenge, really. But I tell you what, whenever I'm blue, I'll always be able to remember those shrill screams of tormented agony and bring a smile to my face."
   "You're lying."
   "Would it matter either way? You never really believed that your little mission was was going to succeed, you knew it would end this way. Come on, Oball, use that scientific reasoning you're so fond of. One ragtag little group of rebels against the behemoth of ORDER? What did you think was going to happen? You were just going to walk up to the front door?"
   "Maybe we would."
   "Well, you're not now. That much is certain. In fact, you might wind up serving the enemy, how would you feel about that?"
   "Scientology is a religion," Oball said, "I would die first."
   "Why not do both?" Nicol asked, and he grinned, displaying his impressive set of fangs.
   Time fangs.
   "I need some new assistants," he said, "It doesn't hurt. Just one bite is all it takes, and then you're in a world without time. It's a beautiful world, Oball. And let's face it, you knew this was coming. Why fight it now, in the end?"
   Oball removed his wristwatch and held it out at arm's length. "You stay away from me."
   Nicol just laughed. "You still don't know who you're dealing with, do you."
   Oball became aware that the watch was suddenly searing hot. He shouted out and dropped it in the mud, where it degraded into a lump of molten silver, hissing and bubbling away. Oball tendered his hand where it had burned him.
   "Your trinkets won't hurt me, Professor. I've been wandering the land since before humanity even had a concept of time. I'm not some fucking funhouse spook, Oball, I'm the alpha and the omega of your goddamn universe."
   "Sciencedamn," Oball softly corrected, and he looked up at the sun again. In the time when science was young, the sun had been a tool of great power to those early discoverers. Technology had come so far since then, but the sun still traced its path from horizon to horizon every day, almost forgotten for its gift to science. Could it be possible that the firey day-star might be instrumental in the achievement of ultimate science?
   "You're about to become a part of a very exclusive club, Oball," Nicol said, grinning as he slowly advanced. "Oh, the atrocities that will be committed in your name! The power, the untainted perfection of it. You might not care much for deities, Professor, but you haven't tried being one."
   "Use the science," Dawkins' voice whispered in Oball's ear. And with that, he knew what he had to do. He raised his shotgun.
   "What are you going to do with that?" Nicol asked, "Oh, I see. Clinging to your mortal weapons for comfort. They're like a warm blanket for you humans, aren't they. Well, go ahead. See what good it does you."
   "I will." Oball used the barrel of the gun to make marks in the mud around his feet. Twelve symbols he sketched in a circle around himself. Nicol continued to advance.
   "A circle of protection," he mused, "How quaint. Did someone tell you that this kind of arcane magic was going to stop me? It might work for some, Oball, but my power is far too great."
   Nicol stepped into the circle, raising his hands in mock alarm.
   "Oh no!" he said, "It looks like you're thoroughly fucked! Forsaken by science and magic both. Any more tricks up your sleeve, or should we get this over with?"
   Oball looked down at Nicol's sneakers, embedded in the mud but yet impeccably clean. Slowly he raised his head to look the vampire right in his luminous yellow eyes, and spoke.
   "Any science," he said, "sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke, motherfucker!"
   Oball raised the shotgun above his head, turned it vertical, and violently drove the barrel into the mud in the centre of the circle. Nicol stared with confusion at the weapon standing upright like a post, its shadow drawn straight as a whip across the marsh and halfway up his leg. Oball stepped off the circle as the crude marks he'd drawn began to glow eerily with their own light.
   Nicol looked at him, transfixed, the smug grin gone from his face and replaced by some darker expression. "That's impossible," he stammered, but his expression betrayed the fact that he knew otherwise.
   He'd stepped...
   "I want you look at this face," Oball said, "I want it to be the last thing you see. This is the face of science. It is your master, it is your destroyer, and it states quite clearly that there is no such thing as fucking time vampires, you cryptozoological asshole!"
   "It's impossible!" Nicol screamed, fangs bared in fury, and he tried to move but the marsh had already risen up to swallow his ankles. The symbols were throbbing with energy and the ground around them began to melt into globs of magma.
   He'd stepped onto a sundial.
   The ground bubbled and steamed and boiled, the wet grass hissed and went up in flames. Nicol screamed and thrashed at the scientist who stood sentry outside the ancient timepiece. The prince of lies and ballsports had been bested by the oldest science of all. For all his ageless power, he could have been destroyed by a caveman curiously unlocking the secrets of the flaming orb overhead.
   "You!" Nicol screamed, pointing an accusing finger, "You and your infernal snack-munching internet-fag friends will never traverse the gates of the Hubbard Zone! You'll all be dead before the next sunrise, this I promise you. This is not a victory you understand me? Only another step toward your inevitable doom."
   "We will succeed," Oball replied, "With science's blessing."
   "I cannot be destroyed! I am beyond time! I am beyond space! I cannot be destrooooooyed!"
   But the ground broke open under his feet, and something began to swarm out of it, to scamper from the depths of the earth to consume the defeated enemy. Hundreds of scurrying, plodding little creatures, devouring everything in their path.
   Turtles.
   Time turtles.
   "No, get away!" Nicol shrieked, but the animals swarmed over him, fixed on him with their beady little eyes and their scaly little beaks full of sharp, chomping little turtle teeth. The adorable swarm of plodding death covered every inch of Nicol's body until only his face was visible, glaring at Oball with furious red eyes. His basketball fell into the marsh and popped, sickly black ooze bubbling out of it as it deflated. The turtles set upon it and dragged it into the mud.
   Oball looked down at himself and saw that the power of science had flowed into him with a flood of sciency energy. His arms were glowing with it, and two luminous words had appeared from the aether. The word WANK on one arm, and PUNCH on the other.
   "With the power of science I condemn you to hell!" he shouted, "Metaphorical hell!"
   He kneeled and drove his arms into the mud, delivering a mighty wankpunch to the Earth itself. The ground split open from the impact, the quake dividing the marsh under Nicol's feet, and the weight of the turtles dragged him into it like an anchor. Of turtles. The last thing that could be heard was the vampire's screaming curse as the mud swallowed him, bubbled over him, consumed him. The shotgun fell over with a wet thwock and the circle fell silent. Oball rose to his feet and looked over it, trying to think of some witty one-liner that he could say, but then too much time passed and he decided that it would sound too awkward so he didn't say anything. The preceding scene had been sufficiently badass, anyway.
   He was hesitant to face the fact that the underlying situation hadn't changed. The beast was slain, but the Fields of Distraction still held him in their etherial trance. He was still lost. The horizons were still featureless and morbidly distant.
   Oball sat in the mud, wondering how long he'd been wandering and how far the others had travelled. Had they reached the Hubbard Zone? Traversed it? Had the victory been achieved, or - unsettlingly - had they perished at the gates? Was he the only one left?
   There was some hazy figure in the mist, and Oball squinted to make it out. A human figure, walking toward him. For one terrifying moment he thought it was Nicol, back from the hereafter, undefeated after all.
   But no. It was a woman. He ran his eyes over her shapely form as she slinked toward him and her face became visible, her heaving bosoms underneath a golden breastplate that could barely contain them. A broadsward as tall as she was sheathed effortlessly in her metal pants.
   "Oball," Kathana said, breathlessly.
   The scientist rose to his feet and went to meet her. The angelic warrior woman smiled at him, disbelief in her fierce eyes.
   "You came back for me."
   "I had to," she replied, "I couldn't face the prospect of losing you, not now. You see, I never told you this before, but... I'm in love with you, Oball."
   "But Nate..."
   "Nate is in the past. I long not for his rippling manly frame, his virile muttonchops and seventeen-inch package. I need a man of science, Oball. And your science has enraptured me. I should have told you this long ago, but I suffered in silence, a prisoner of my eternal longing for you."
   "Give me some sugar, baby," Oball said, and they passionately embraced, tongues thrusting at each other like lances in some medieval gladiator pavilion.
   A sexy gladiator pavilion.
   "You know," Oball said as he pulled away, "I have a broadsword too."
   Kathana smiled. "Maybe you can thrust it at me."
   "Science willing."
   They embraced again, sweaty bodies rubbing against each other in the muddy, swampy field. Hands groped like mango-pickers selecting ripe fruit from the mango vine. Oball's stunning white lab coat dropped into the mud, followed soon after by a golden breastplate.
   And then some sex happened.

Looming overhead, the mighty wall blazed with blinding flames and deep red rivulets of something molten. This was the end of the line for travellers seeking to traverse this land. This was the forbidding entrance to the Hubbard Zone, the barrier known as the Firewall. Navigator, Sephira and Ripper stood before it, looking over it ominously.
   "The glowy-fence," Sephira whispered in awe, whether because it was such a mighty challenge or merely because it was something shiny.
   Ripper put her hand close to it, feeling its searing heat on her flesh. "We're sure as hell not going over it."
   "Not over!" Sephira exclaimed, "Under! Under!"
   "We didn't bring any shovels," Navigator said. "Hang on, I think I can shoot it down..." He picked up his shotgun.
   "No shoot," Sephira said, "You'll make the red stuff come out. Lots of red stuff. Come. Follow."
   She ran along the edge of the wall, inspecting the base of it, and the others followed. They ran some distance before they came to a rocky cliff face. The wall ran over it, but Sephira turned to travel along side of it. Navigator started laughing, knowing already what they expected to find.
   Sure enough, there was a cave cut into the rock. It was a narrow opening, but they could squeeze through it with some little effort, and it led into the ground underneath the Firewall.
   "Seph, you crazy genius!" Navigator exclaimed, but Sephira had already disappeared into the darkness. As Navigator struggled through the hole, he heard the echo of her voice shouting something in the depths of the cave. He thought he heard another voice too, but surely it was only the sound reverberating.
   The cave was surprisingly clean and tidy. Navigator and Ripper tread carefully in the dim light, running hands along the smooth rock surface. It was almost as though someone had maintained this place, kept it clean, almost homely.
   Oddly, there appeared to be a light emerging from deeper in the cave. As they walked, the light became stronger. Flickering. Candle-light.
   Navigator could see bookshelves lining the walls of the cave, neatly-maintained tomes of English literature and arcane poetry. There was no dust on them, no wear. There was furniture, too, a quaint woodgrain table setting and a soft recliner. Somebody lived here. And in the flickering light, Navigator saw Sephira giving a friendly hug to a man whose familiar face smiled at them without a hint of malice.
   "Hello, gents!" the man said.
   Navigator's breath caught in his throat.
   "Holy shit," Ripper said, "Is that..."
   "It's Fishboy."