Ivy checked the clock for seemingly the hundredth time.
Ivy's typical daytime duties was patrolling, but this evening she had been assigned to monitor duty. Everyone had to pull monitor duty at some point, and as the newest member with the least seniority, she was required to work the weekend shift. Although not as challenging as the night shift, Ivy still only got an hour for her meal break. Normally, she wouldn't eat as she didn't feel the need to. Soaking up the sun during the day was sufficient. However, she could eat if she desired. Instead of using her meal break for nourishment, she usually took the time to unwind or engage in leisure activities. But tonight, she had other intentions.
"Is he hot?"
Ivy cast a sideways glance towards her colleague, Nine Volt. Nine Volt was a petite woman, standing at a mere five-feet nothing. Ivy liked Nine because she was the only woman Ivy knew who was shorter than her. Ivy didn't go around as Myrtle very often, but she still had a great deal of sympathy for other vertically challenged lasses.
To compensate for her poor eyesight, Nine Volt wore a pair of advanced, futuristic looking goggles she custom built. With brown hair, a large nose, and a flat chest, Nine Volt was frequently misidentified as a male, especially with how talkative she was. Ivy didn't mind. Nine Volt was not skilled in combat situations, but she excelled in technology-related tasks. She was a prodigy when it came to equipment and primarily served as a support member for the team.
Ivy frowned, "Is who hot?"
Nine took her feet off the desk as she turned away from the monitors, "You keep looking at the clock every five minutes and you told me three times you needed to be free for dinner break exactly at six. I'm assuming you got a guy coming to visit, since you can't leave the base."
Ivy considered the matter briefly before speaking in a hushed tone, "I wouldn't call him hot. He's attractive. He's older, so he doesn't have that youthful, firm butt, but..." she bit her lower lip, "Damn if he doesn't have swagger. He exudes confidence and I think he's really into me. I mean...MMM!" She slightly shook her head, "You know how some guys are physically attractive, but when they start talking, they turn you off?" She looked at Nine Volt, "Well, Jack's appearance might rate a seven, but he knows how to flirt. I... don't think I ever had a guy chase me as hard as he has. Check that. No guy had EVER chased me."
Nine looked thoughtful, "So you gonna let him catch you?"
Ivy smiled, then the smile went sour, "Actually, I could have let him catch me already, but..."
Nine volt gave Ivy a slow nod and a wink, "You keep getting clam jammed. Got it." Nine glanced around just to double check that nobody was listening, "I do gotta ask..." She leaned in to speak in a hushed tone, "Did you bang Adam?"
Ivy glared for a second, then glanced around to also make sure they were alone, "Don't talk about that. I don't want it getting back to Jack. Apparently the two of them know each other and they don't get along."
Gear sat up and looked surprised, "You're dating both? Wow. High Five, Sister!" Nine Volt held up a hand towards Ivy.
Ivy waved it off, "What? NO. I..." she sighed and rubbed her eyes, "It was an accident. A one time thing."
Nine squinted with one eye and pulled her head back, "An accident? What? You tripped and impaled yourself on his dick?"
Ivy looked away, "Something like that."
Nine Volt laughed, "Seriously? Wow." She shrugged, "Ah well. It's not like he's my cup of tea. My husband is one of the good ones. He wants to stay at home and take care of the kids." She pointed a finger at Ivy, "Take my advice. Make sure he had a good relationship with his mom. If his parents got divorced, or he was raised by a single father, run. Just run."
Ivy looked thoughtful, "I'm... not sure. I'll have to ask."
Nine Volt shoot her head slightly, "Be careful. Just asking that question will cause most guys to freak out, which is a sign there is a problem, in and of itself." She glanced at a monitor, "Speak of the devil, is that him?"
Ivy swiveled her chair to peer closer at the image, "Ayup. He's early."
Nine Volt raised an eyebrow and leaned towards Ivy, "And... bisexual by the looks of it. Let me guess. He and Adam had a thing and they broke up?" She looked off into the distance, "Adam struck me as rather bi as well, but in a bottom sort of way."
Ivy looked offended, but froze and looked thoughtful, "Actually... huh. That'd make sense." She shook her head, "But no. Jack is from another universe. He dresses like that because that's how straight men in his world look, that's all."
Nine sighed, "Damn. I was hoping you could tell me about how you had a threesome. I need to live vicariously through others now, ever since my husband pulled the pin on the fat grenade." She jogged her head towards the exit, "Go. It's a slow night. Nothing bad is going to happen if you leave ten minutes early."
Ivy spun her chair around and started to head towards the exit while looking back over her shoulder, "You sure?"
Nine Volt waved dismissively towards Ivy, "Get outta har!" then laughed.
"What's the worse that could happen?"
"What are we looking for again?"
Tom Fullery was seated in front of several computer screens, quickly flipping through videos by watching a few seconds before moving on to the next. He was highly skilled in this task, able to view everything at double speed. The man had chalk white skin and violet hair. He looked up at the figure standing in the shadows and blinked, revealing a pair of dice floating in darkness where Tom's eyes should have been. Every time he blinked, the sides showing would change. Currently they were showing a five and a four, "Why do you keep disturbing me?" He asked with a hint of annoyance.
"Because you are so slow. If you told me what to look for, I could take care of it in a fraction of the time."
Tom paused his work and swiveled to face the man looming in the shadows, "Listen. You hired me to complete a task, and I am the BEST meme crafter money can buy. This isn't straightforward like assembling Ikea furniture, it's ART. You can't just follow a formula to achieve success. It requires creativity and intuition." He turned back to his monitors, "We can't just upload a contagious meme on the internet, it will be caught by the censor bots before it finishes getting compiled." He raised a finger, "But there's a way around it. If we find a video that has already been uploaded by someone else, it'll have a low priority for reverification. So we need to find a video with viral potential that hasn't gone viral yet. We append the memetic virus to it along with a catchy song and release it through the bot farm. If we time it right, we'll have a full fourteen minutes before the censor bots detect it." He grinned, "By then, it'll be too late."
"Can't we just take a video that's has gone viral and use that?"
Tom rubbed his eyes and when he opened them again, the dice showed boxcars. He firmly stated, "No, because first impressions have the strongest reaction. We can't use a meme that people have already seen. AND we can't pretend it's new either, people can easily spot it. AND if we try to stage a meme, it won't work either. It causes dissidence with the payload. Don't ask me why, I don't have time to explain why intent matters." He shrugged and returned back to his monitors, "I'm actually impressed that you found a song that fits my criteria." He resumed his search program, "We need a video that falls in the middle. A sweet spot where it has viral potential but hasn't been discovered yet."
"You can thank my otherworldly allies for the song. I can promise you, nobody has heard it on this world. Speaking of... they are getting impatient."
Tom rolled his eyes. Literally. They spun around inside his head and came up two and two, "Well they'll just have to wait because you can't-"
"THAT ONE." The figure pointed at one of the monitors.
Tom stopped the feed and peered at the video in question. It was only a few hours old, yet only a dozen people had seen it, "Uhh... you sure about this?"
Lord Od leaned out of the shadows far enough that his face became illuminated by the glow of the screen. He tapped the monitor displaying the video titled 'Karl Asks For The Manager', "I know that guy in the trench coat... and I don't believe in coincidences. This is the one. Trust me."
Tom stared and checked a few things before downloading it, "Alright. You're the one paying the bills. Just don't blame me if it doesn't work. Although..." He paused to look back at his employer, "You know what we are doing is going to hurt a lot of people, right? If this is going to work, we can't soft ball this. You used to be the kind of guy who... fought people like me, not hired me."
The Caffiend nodded and turned to slowly leave the room, "Times have changed, and so must I. How long until it's ready?"
Tom started typing away and a few seconds later replied, "ETA, four minutes to finish the payload. We'll have between ten to fourteen for it to spread. It'll start taking effect about the same time, at which point it'll spread from person to person. So, maximum chaos in... twenty one to twenty four minutes."
A door to another room opened. A strange crackling blue energy from the next room silhouetted Lord Od as he stood in the archway, "Well then. I'll tell our 'friends' to prepare to be summoned within the half hour."
Tom just grinned and turned back to his keyboard. He started to type furiously as he started to blend science and magic together to create his little 'gift' for Empire City. He blinked and the dice came up snake eyes as he saw the stats on the video's viral potential, "Well, Well, Well..."
"Everybody is gonna have fun TONIGHT!"
"Why didn't they take you to the waiting room?"
It was just about six o'clock and Jack was sitting in the Rascals' waiting room. He didn't even know there was a waiting room. Last time he came here as Adam, they bypassed it entirely and he wound up in the main lounge. This time someone from the bench was on duty and showed Jack here, stating that they'd go tell Ivy. It looked like the sort of waiting room you'd have in a dentist's office, right down to the strangely out of time furniture and magazines dating back to the last epoch.
~I got no idea. Maybe they have different rules when you're hot?~
Jack picked up one of the magazines, "Huh. I guess they have National Geographic everywhere." He tilted his head to the side as he looked at a cover that was a bunch of topless African men from some nameless tribe he'd never heard of. The article was titled 'The Tribe Ruled By MEN'. Before Jack could look for the article to give it a read, the door opened. Jack tossed the magazine onto the coffee table and gave the door a smile.
Ivy came sauntering in, "Hope you didn't have to wait long. I only got an hour for dinner." She smiled as she closed the distance, "Were you hungry, or did you want the nickel tour first?"
Jack held up a finger to silently as her to wait, then turned to the box he left on his chair and picked it up, "Before you say anything else, I-" Just as Jack brought his other hand around to dramatically open the box, his phone started to ring.
What was odd was how Ivy's phone started to ring at the exact same moment.
Ivy frowned as she fished out her phone and looked at it. Jack sighed and held the box with one hand and took out his own with the other. It was something on his Tweeter app. Jack frowned, "Hold it. I didn't download Tweeter."
Ivy swiped up and tilted her head to the side, "Hey. I think this is you."
Jack put the box down and stepped closer, "Huh?"
Ivy nodded and held out her phone to show off a video playing silently with the volume off. The video was labeled 'Karl Asks For The Manager' and yes indeed, that looked like Jack. Jack frowned, "Holy crap. That happened when I was buying these cupcakes." He pointed at her phone, "In my defense, that guy was delusional."
Ivy smiled at Jack, "You bought cupcakes?" She then looked at Jack with Mock offense, "Hold it. You didn't bake me cupcakes?"
Jack let out a bark of laughter, "HA! ME? Seriously? If it doesn't involve puncturing the plastic and popping it in the microwave, I'm useless. I could burn water." He picked up the box and held it up for inspection, "I work hard so people who specialize in making excellent cupcakes can receive money from me and continue the circle of life." He paused then lowered the box, "Wait. I take it that in this universe men do all the cooking?"
Ivy looked a little taken off guard, "Uh... well... I mean... not to be sexist or-" She didn't get to finish her thought.
Because at that exact moment all Hell broke loose.
Ivy checked the clock for seemingly the hundredth time.
Ivy's typical daytime duties was patrolling, but this evening she had been assigned to monitor duty. Everyone had to pull monitor duty at some point, and as the newest member with the least seniority, she was required to work the weekend shift. Although not as challenging as the night shift, Ivy still only got an hour for her meal break. Normally, she wouldn't eat as she didn't feel the need to. Soaking up the sun during the day was sufficient. However, she could eat if she desired. Instead of using her meal break for nourishment, she usually took the time to unwind or engage in leisure activities. But tonight, she had other intentions.
"Is he hot?"
Ivy cast a sideways glance towards her colleague, Nine Volt. Nine Volt was a petite woman, standing at a mere five-feet nothing. Ivy liked Nine because she was the only woman Ivy knew who was shorter than her. Ivy didn't go around as Myrtle very often, but she still had a great deal of sympathy for other vertically challenged lasses.
To compensate for her poor eyesight, Nine Volt wore a pair of advanced, futuristic looking goggles she custom built. With brown hair, a large nose, and a flat chest, Nine Volt was frequently misidentified as a male, especially with how talkative she was. Ivy didn't mind. Nine Volt was not skilled in combat situations, but she excelled in technology-related tasks. She was a prodigy when it came to equipment and primarily served as a support member for the team.
Ivy frowned, "Is who hot?"
Nine took her feet off the desk as she turned away from the monitors, "You keep looking at the clock every five minutes and you told me three times you needed to be free for dinner break exactly at six. I'm assuming you got a guy coming to visit, since you can't leave the base."
Ivy considered the matter briefly before speaking in a hushed tone, "I wouldn't call him hot. He's attractive. He's older, so he doesn't have that youthful, firm butt, but..." she bit her lower lip, "Damn if he doesn't have swagger. He exudes confidence and I think he's really into me. I mean...MMM!" She slightly shook her head, "You know how some guys are physically attractive, but when they start talking, they turn you off?" She looked at Nine Volt, "Well, Jack's appearance might rate a seven, but he knows how to flirt. I... don't think I ever had a guy chase me as hard as he has. Check that. No guy had EVER chased me."
Nine looked thoughtful, "So you gonna let him catch you?"
Ivy smiled, then the smile went sour, "Actually, I could have let him catch me already, but..."
Nine volt gave Ivy a slow nod and a wink, "You keep getting clam jammed. Got it." Nine glanced around just to double check that nobody was listening, "I do gotta ask..." She leaned in to speak in a hushed tone, "Did you bang Adam?"
Ivy glared for a second, then glanced around to also make sure they were alone, "Don't talk about that. I don't want it getting back to Jack. Apparently the two of them know each other and they don't get along."
Gear sat up and looked surprised, "You're dating both? Wow. High Five, Sister!" Nine Volt held up a hand towards Ivy.
Ivy waved it off, "What? NO. I..." she sighed and rubbed her eyes, "It was an accident. A one time thing."
Nine squinted with one eye and pulled her head back, "An accident? What? You tripped and impaled yourself on his dick?"
Ivy looked away, "Something like that."
Nine Volt laughed, "Seriously? Wow." She shrugged, "Ah well. It's not like he's my cup of tea. My husband is one of the good ones. He wants to stay at home and take care of the kids." She pointed a finger at Ivy, "Take my advice. Make sure he had a good relationship with his mom. If his parents got divorced, or he was raised by a single father, run. Just run."
Ivy looked thoughtful, "I'm... not sure. I'll have to ask."
Nine Volt shoot her head slightly, "Be careful. Just asking that question will cause most guys to freak out, which is a sign there is a problem, in and of itself." She glanced at a monitor, "Speak of the devil, is that him?"
Ivy swiveled her chair to peer closer at the image, "Ayup. He's early."
Nine Volt raised an eyebrow and leaned towards Ivy, "And... bisexual by the looks of it. Let me guess. He and Adam had a thing and they broke up?" She looked off into the distance, "Adam struck me as rather bi as well, but in a bottom sort of way."
Ivy looked offended, but froze and looked thoughtful, "Actually... huh. That'd make sense." She shook her head, "But no. Jack is from another universe. He dresses like that because that's how straight men in his world look, that's all."
Nine sighed, "Damn. I was hoping you could tell me about how you had a threesome. I need to live vicariously through others now, ever since my husband pulled the pin on the fat grenade." She jogged her head towards the exit, "Go. It's a slow night. Nothing bad is going to happen if you leave ten minutes early."
Ivy spun her chair around and started to head towards the exit while looking back over her shoulder, "You sure?"
Nine Volt waved dismissively towards Ivy, "Get outta har!" then laughed.
"What's the worse that could happen?"
"What are we looking for again?"
Tom Fullery was seated in front of several computer screens, quickly flipping through videos by watching a few seconds before moving on to the next. He was highly skilled in this task, able to view everything at double speed. The man had chalk white skin and violet hair. He looked up at the figure standing in the shadows and blinked, revealing a pair of dice floating in darkness where Tom's eyes should have been. Every time he blinked, the sides showing would change. Currently they were showing a five and a four, "Why do you keep disturbing me?" He asked with a hint of annoyance.
"Because you are so slow. If you told me what to look for, I could take care of it in a fraction of the time."
Tom paused his work and swiveled to face the man looming in the shadows, "Listen. You hired me to complete a task, and I am the BEST meme crafter money can buy. This isn't straightforward like assembling Ikea furniture, it's ART. You can't just follow a formula to achieve success. It requires creativity and intuition." He turned back to his monitors, "We can't just upload a contagious meme on the internet, it will be caught by the censor bots before it finishes getting compiled." He raised a finger, "But there's a way around it. If we find a video that has already been uploaded by someone else, it'll have a low priority for reverification. So we need to find a video with viral potential that hasn't gone viral yet. We append the memetic virus to it along with a catchy song and release it through the bot farm. If we time it right, we'll have a full fourteen minutes before the censor bots detect it." He grinned, "By then, it'll be too late."
"Can't we just take a video that's has gone viral and use that?"
Tom rubbed his eyes and when he opened them again, the dice showed boxcars. He firmly stated, "No, because first impressions have the strongest reaction. We can't use a meme that people have already seen. AND we can't pretend it's new either, people can easily spot it. AND if we try to stage a meme, it won't work either. It causes dissidence with the payload. Don't ask me why, I don't have time to explain why intent matters." He shrugged and returned back to his monitors, "I'm actually impressed that you found a song that fits my criteria." He resumed his search program, "We need a video that falls in the middle. A sweet spot where it has viral potential but hasn't been discovered yet."
"You can thank my otherworldly allies for the song. I can promise you, nobody has heard it on this world. Speaking of... they are getting impatient."
Tom rolled his eyes. Literally. They spun around inside his head and came up two and two, "Well they'll just have to wait because you can't-"
"THAT ONE." The figure pointed at one of the monitors.
Tom stopped the feed and peered at the video in question. It was only a few hours old, yet only a dozen people had seen it, "Uhh... you sure about this?"
Lord Od leaned out of the shadows far enough that his face became illuminated by the glow of the screen. He tapped the monitor displaying the video titled 'Karl Asks For The Manager', "I know that guy in the trench coat... and I don't believe in coincidences. This is the one. Trust me."
Tom stared and checked a few things before downloading it, "Alright. You're the one paying the bills. Just don't blame me if it doesn't work. Although..." He paused to look back at his employer, "You know what we are doing is going to hurt a lot of people, right? If this is going to work, we can't soft ball this. You used to be the kind of guy who... fought people like me, not hired me."
The Caffiend nodded and turned to slowly leave the room, "Times have changed, and so must I. How long until it's ready?"
Tom started typing away and a few seconds later replied, "ETA, four minutes to finish the payload. We'll have between ten to fourteen for it to spread. It'll start taking effect about the same time, at which point it'll spread from person to person. So, maximum chaos in... twenty one to twenty four minutes."
A door to another room opened. A strange crackling blue energy from the next room silhouetted Lord Od as he stood in the archway, "Well then. I'll tell our 'friends' to prepare to be summoned within the half hour."
Tom just grinned and turned back to his keyboard. He started to type furiously as he started to blend science and magic together to create his little 'gift' for Empire City. He blinked and the dice came up snake eyes as he saw the stats on the video's viral potential, "Well, Well, Well..."
"Everybody is gonna have fun TONIGHT!"
"Why didn't they take you to the waiting room?"
It was just about six o'clock and Jack was sitting in the Rascals' waiting room. He didn't even know there was a waiting room. Last time he came here as Adam, they bypassed it entirely and he wound up in the main lounge. This time someone from the bench was on duty and showed Jack here, stating that they'd go tell Ivy. It looked like the sort of waiting room you'd have in a dentist's office, right down to the strangely out of time furniture and magazines dating back to the last epoch.
~I got no idea. Maybe they have different rules when you're hot?~
Jack picked up one of the magazines, "Huh. I guess they have National Geographic everywhere." He tilted his head to the side as he looked at a cover that was a bunch of topless African men from some nameless tribe he'd never heard of. The article was titled 'The Tribe Ruled By MEN'. Before Jack could look for the article to give it a read, the door opened. Jack tossed the magazine onto the coffee table and gave the door a smile.
Ivy came sauntering in, "Hope you didn't have to wait long. I only got an hour for dinner." She smiled as she closed the distance, "Were you hungry, or did you want the nickel tour first?"
Jack held up a finger to silently as her to wait, then turned to the box he left on his chair and picked it up, "Before you say anything else, I-" Just as Jack brought his other hand around to dramatically open the box, his phone started to ring.
What was odd was how Ivy's phone started to ring at the exact same moment.
Ivy frowned as she fished out her phone and looked at it. Jack sighed and held the box with one hand and took out his own with the other. It was something on his Tweeter app. Jack frowned, "Hold it. I didn't download Tweeter."
Ivy swiped up and tilted her head to the side, "Hey. I think this is you."
Jack put the box down and stepped closer, "Huh?"
Ivy nodded and held out her phone to show off a video playing silently with the volume off. The video was labeled 'Karl Asks For The Manager' and yes indeed, that looked like Jack. Jack frowned, "Holy crap. That happened when I was buying these cupcakes." He pointed at her phone, "In my defense, that guy was delusional."
Ivy smiled at Jack, "You bought cupcakes?" She then looked at Jack with Mock offense, "Hold it. You didn't bake me cupcakes?"
Jack let out a bark of laughter, "HA! ME? Seriously? If it doesn't involve puncturing the plastic and popping it in the microwave, I'm useless. I could burn water." He picked up the box and held it up for inspection, "I work hard so people who specialize in making excellent cupcakes can receive money from me and continue the circle of life." He paused then lowered the box, "Wait. I take it that in this universe men do all the cooking?"
Ivy looked a little taken off guard, "Uh... well... I mean... not to be sexist or-" She didn't get to finish her thought.
Because at that exact moment all Hell broke loose.
