Unfortunately, TNE severed that artery.
Well, that’s so we could harvest their organs and sell them on the black market. I mean, they WERE our players, so we didn’t want them to be alive when we did it.
(Man, you really are quite the chigger, aren’t you? Although in my case, tsetse fly is perhaps more apt.)
But seriously, you’ll agree that we’d get them all back when they saw what was coming next.
When the RC got to the Black Curtain, suddenly this army of evolved K’kree would come storming out. They wouldn’t look like the things on the T-shirt; that was cunning misdirection. Instead they’d all have shining spiral horns growing from their foreheads, and when they moved, they left a trail of shimmering sparkles, which were the leftover nanites that gave them their Great Power. And when they confronted the Mighty RC Army, beams shot from their horns, impregnated with these retrovirus nanites that attacked DNA and blanked out the modern elements of the peptide strings, leaving only the ancient plant genes, and suddenly the Mighty RC Army was transformed into a field of beautiful, multi-colored irises! But then, before the hungry K’kree could eat all of the irises, someone in orbit saw that the flowers spelled out, “Margaret is the One and True Emperor.”
So everyone jumped in their ships to head over to Delphi. There they found a big glass sarcophagus surrounded by thorn bushes with a beautiful (though slowly aging—kinda like T’Pau) duchess asleep within. And the IRIS bellhop in attendance drew their attention to a sign that read, “The Once and Future Empress Can Be Awoken Only By a Kiss From One Pure in Heart.”
And everyone sits around for a while and thinks that they can’t think of anyone with a purely good heart. Then someone says, “Wait! It doesn’t say ‘pure good in heart,’ it just says ‘pure!’” Right! They all say, and jump back in their ships and head back to Core to find Lucan who looks all pale and pasty like Locutus of Borg. So while he keeps saying, “You will be retconned” they yank off all the biomechanical widgets, give him a shower, and then cover him with a good spray-on tan. Then, Back to Delphi!
Back on Delphi, Margaret was re-awakened, marred only by Lucan’s repeated protestations, “You want me to kiss a GIRL? You can’t make me, you can’t make me.” (They did) When Margaret awoke, still looking like T’Pau, she said, “Dee vould have vords vid me?” Summoning up their courage, they said, “Yes, we need to make you Empress and make all the Bad Stuff go away.” She thought long and hard and said, “Only ven de two emperors make peace, vun vid de udder.” Several confusing sentences later it was established this meant that Strephon and Dulinor must prove that they were buddies, by attending a baseball game together, and singing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” in the seventh-inning stretch. So, off to Usdiki, where they found Strephon sleeping one off in a low berth amid a hall of really impressive statuary, and woke him up (Lucan insisted on kissing him, but as he was no longer wearing his poisonous lip gloss it didn’t hurt). Then they thought, “Phooey! Dulinor was eaten by a giant insane lawn mower!”
But wait! Was it really a lawn mower, or a giant DNA sequencer and re-splicer merely disguised as a lawn mower? (When we hired Price, Waterhouse and Cooper to focus group all this stuff, we thought it was going to be a giant pool cleaner, but PWC reported that was completely unbelievable, and not only was a giant AI lawn mower more realistic, John Deere corporate sponsorship was available. Well, we weren’t stupid!) “But how will we ever find it?” Margaret drew herself to her full imperious height, and whipped out an Imperial Scroll (established by Imperial Edict 98, the edict text runs to 37 1/2 pages, much of it pure legalese and Pig-Latin; when distilled down, it proves very direct- “ead-ray the ords-way on the age-pay, and nanites and other sufficiently advanced technology which look like magick will make it happen.”)
So, in a pouf! of nanites, they were off to (wherever), where they found the giant insane (green) AI lawn mower, now employed as a novelty café (usual greasy fare, but with theme names like, “Vargr-B-Q Sandwich”). They explained why they had come, and eventually found the control panel where they were able to hack into its memory banks (they flipped Droyne caste-ing coynes until Yaskoydray appeared and said, “the password is Poul Anderson”) and confirm that it did contain Dulinor’s DNA (Lucan tried to kiss it, but it sawed his lips off, then said, “Yuck! Tastes like pure evil!” and spat out the pieces). They got to the screen, “Clone, Force-Grow to Full Adulthood, and Implant with Full Personality and Memories? Y/N,” and before you knew it, Dulinor was standing there, threw up his arms and cried, “Gaaah! Don’t eat me! Hey, why am I wearing green instead of black?”
They assured him that everything was fine now, that Margaret was cleaning everything up and painting everything green, and Dulinor looked down, shuffled his feet, and sheepishly said, “Yeah, I knew all along, but my male pride…Nothing runs like a Deere!”
So they found a ballfield, but as humans no longer play baseball (as established in the LBB Supplement 101, “Star Trek: Deep Space 9”) they had to get a bunch of Ithklur to play the game for them. Everyone had corndogs, and there was much rejoicing, especially when the Ithklur killed the umpire.
“So,” Strephon said to Dulinor, “now that we’re buds again, we can re-establish the Third Imperium?” And Dulinor said, “I guess, but what about the billions and billions of dead from the Rape of the Hi-Pop worlds?” Strephon blanched, and his visage took on the grave demeanor of one who had eaten too many corndogs and just realized what they were made of. “Yes, brother, perhaps there is no going back….”
But wait! With another pouf of nanites, Margaret appeared and pointed out that no one had died. Instead of dying, through the power of the High Technology of the Imperial Scroll (but which only LOOKS like magick), all of the dead had in fact been teleported to Delphi where they lived still, stacked up in continents of scaffolding where their bioelectricity powered the trading boards at the Tukera Stock Exchange, while meanwhile in their minds they were re-living old re-runs of “I Love Shugilii” (the show where the bandleader comes home and says, “Shugiree, what have you done this time?”).
So they all retired to the Imperial Gardens at Margaret’s palace for a celebratory feast to establish the restoration of the Third Imperium.
And Dulinor proposed a toast: “To absent editions!” And Strephon punched him playfully in the shoulder and said, “Nothing bad will ever happen again!” And Margaret pronounced them bro and bro. Then she raised her Imperial Scroll, read the magickal retrovirus nanite words, and fireworks appeared over their heads. They were mostly things like giant golden swirls spelling out, “We told you all along it was Margaret, but would you listen? Hmmph, Men!” Duke Craig snatched a fly off of the centerpiece with his really long tongue, the Solomani guy led the garden’s ornamental geese around in a parade, Lucan followed the parade, reasoning that geese, also not having lips, might like him, the Vilani guy lost his silverware in his really long sleeves, and Norris (never mind where they found him) tried to comb the soup out of his mustache. Then they all played Star Wars the roleplaying game until Strephon said, “Midichlorians? Are you $%^#ting me?” And Dulinor tackled him, knocking over the table, and all of the food fell into the Imperial Pond, where it was eaten by Babel Fish.
The End. (copyright Dave Nilsen and Quintessential Devil productions, all rights reserved.)
Geez, if people would only be patient, and not get distracted by shiny CCGs.
And that, aramis, is the last response you will receive from me. I came here to see if there was anyone genuinely interested in TNE who wanted to talk, not to someone only interested in nursing 20-year old grudges. Should you want a response from me in the future, just write it yourself, it will be easier. But make sure you write it on some nice stationery, something like, “From the Desk of the Quintessential Devil in These Matters.”
Dave
"SFB is too hard!" "It's supposed to be hard! It's the hard that makes it great!" -- repurposed from the great Jimmy Dugan)
