Chapter Twelve
By UnReality
"If anything could turn a Canuck into a Scotsman," said Lianna, "it'd be Little Orphan Annie, I'm sure of it. I've seen this sort of thing once or twice before in my work with the CIA." She paused, although whether it was for dramatic effect or simply because she had lost her place in the (by now) quite convoluted script, the others could not say. "It isn't pretty," she finally added. "I'll tell you that much. It sure isn't pretty. Most Canadians just haven't got the legs for a kilt. And make no mistake: maple syrup and haggis do NOT mix." She shuddered visibly.
"Well at any rate," said Spydie, who quite frankly still thought the barbecue was a much better idea -- but also knew it was now only a memory, a fading memory, blending into dull tableaux -- "William Wallace is dead. I know that. I mean, I saw the movie. So it can't be him, right?...unless you've also perfected some horrific new device for raising the dead that we're not aware of?"
"Raising the dead..." said Enapov "Hmm. Now there's an idea...but no, I don't think so. I mean, I *could* always check the itinerary, see if maybe I missed something, but I think it's just global conquest through hideously expensive islands. *Zombie-free* hideously expensive islands, mind you." She looked at Glitteroch. "It is just the islands, right, boss?"
"Yes," sighed Glitteroch, as if suddenly bored of the whole exercise, "just islands. Just unexplainable little landmasses sprouting like so much...well, sprouting stuff from the surface of the world's watery underbelly. Like the newly budding breasts of some many-nippled freakish she-god, or the floating cathedrals erected in her honor." The others eyed him suspiciously, or else they stared at their feet, paged through their scripts, prayed for rain. Lanz fiddled with his cape. "Like some beautifully constructed metahpor," continued Glitter, "which probably has no place in a goofy story like this and which, on a full twelve pints of Guinness and a strawberry Pop Tart, luckily fails to come to mind. Hic!"
He paused again, glancing now at the splintered ruins of the boardroom table, as if seeing them for the first time (or as if only just now noticing his own considerable *lack* of a Scottish accent and, worried he might be called on it, stalling for time).
"Um...Dale...?" he said after a moment.
"Yes, sir?" answered a chipper DaMann.
"That table...the one underneath the faulty, spider-infested duct-work you promised you'd have a look at before before my evil plan for wealth and glory got underway...?"
"Yes?"
"That, um...that wouldn't be my special table, now would it? The antique that I had hand-delivered from Scotland which I clearly remember telling you was vitally important to the ambience I was trying to achieve here on the island...?"
"The one engraved by the master artisan keogh, sir?"
"The one engraved by the master artisan keogh, yes."
"Ah. Well then, yes, sir, that would be the table."
"I see." Glitteroch sighed. "Well that's perfect, now isn't it? Bloody hell. I mean honestly, can't we have nice things without weirdo cybernetic op'ratives falling from the sky to smash them to bits? And you!" He spun around to face Cyberbeast -- no easy task since they had already been facing each other and the floor was littered with jagged pieces of teak. "You bleedin' half-mechanized bastard!" He glared into Cyberbeast's robotic eye. "Bloody, bloody hell!" He seemed very close to tears.
"I think," piped up Spydie, "we may have lost sight of the main issue here."
"You mean the slow yet unrelenting Amon-ization of humanity?" asked Dr. Xigeous, bouncing a bright orange XIG-ball on his knee.
"Or the uncanny intrusion of Vic Tayback into every facet of our strange and silly little lives?" asked Gray.
"No," said Spydie, "I mean the shouting, syrup-deprived Canadian running amok right outside this boardroom."
"I'm not sure I'd call that the *main* issue," said Cyberbeast. "I mean, not to knock Monsieur Fifty or anything, but that did seem like more of a subplot to me."
"It did smack of the incidental," noted Enapov. "Frankly, I almost forgot we'd been torturing him."
"That was us?" asked Dale. "Huh. You know, that makes sense, but in all the confusion I think I'd forgotten."
"That's the nature of subplots and minor characters," said UnReality. "Heck, some never even get properly introduced--or, if they do, it's only for a brief moment, without warning or a logical connection to the story. They appear, they disappear, and really all they do is distract and confuse while the *real* plot, until then only hinted at, is still unfolding." He disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"What the bloody hell was that?!" shouted Glitteroch. "Who let him in here?"
"I don't know," said Cyberbeast, "but it was certainly distracting and confusing."
"And meanwhile," said Buck, striding triumphantly into the room, his face painted blue and his kilt smeared with what looked like pancake batter -- with what everyone *hoped* was pancake batter -- "the *real* plot was still unfolding."
...to be continued (in some no doubt horrifying yet wacky way)...
