Theme Planet (40 page)

Dex powered a blow into Jim’s
wounded knee, his smashed knee-cap, his bullet-ravaged joint, and Jim screamed
and twitched as he pulled the trigger. The bullet skimmed Dex’s cheek, grazing
the skin, so close the cordite trail stung his eyes. Dex slammed another punch
into Jim’s knee, took the Makarov from the twitching man’s hand, stood, and
kicked Jim from the high bridge. Jim flailed, and fell from the track, his arms
and legs flapping all the way down to the bottom.

Dex ran for the chopper, and the
pilot took precious seconds to realise just what the hell had happened. The
SIMs were quicker to react. The SMKKs howled behind him, bullets smacking into
the track as Dex sprinted... The chopper suddenly banked, but Dex leapt and
grasped the ladder. He sailed out over the vast spread of forest and rocks and
river, his lungs in his mouth, his balls in his brain, and he clambered up the
alloy with gritted teeth and dark glittering eyes, leapt into the cockpit and
lifted the Makarov. The pilot turned, lifting his hands. “No! Please, no!”

Dex put a bullet between his
eyes, jumped forward and took the controls, swung the chopper around, armed the
miniguns, and ploughed towards the SIMs who were standing, faces neutral,
wondering what to shoot at next. With a blast and scream, the miniguns cut the
SIMs in half where they stood, sending them toppling out into infinity.

Dex hovered for a few moments,
rotors
whumping,
and - face grim - manoeuvred the pilot from his seat
and out the loading doors. He pulled them closed with a grunt and jumped back
into the pilot’s seat, took the chopper around in an arc and slammed down,
under the high rollercoaster bridge and towards the river and the rocks far
below. He pulled the chopper up on a bed of hot exhaust fumes, and hovered for
a while, searching. It took him maybe five minutes to spot Jim’s bent and
broken body. Satisfied, he lifted the chopper high into the sky, spiralling up
past the rollercoaster bridge and the bodies of massacred SIMs, and up into the
clouds where he paused, calling up a map of the Theme Planet on the HUD.

Dex powered the chopper away from
the Forest of Iron, following the map. Below, the whole of
Adventure Central
spread out, muggy through wisps of straggled cloud. As he cruised, there to
the left Dex saw Pterodactyl Castle, with its high towers and walls made from
reconstituted dinosaur bone and skin. The gates were dinosaur fangs, the
roofing tiles made from the armoured spine-plates of a fukyusaurus. Up ahead,
piercing
the clouds with their sheer height and mass, were the Skycloud Mountains - the
place all true adventurers went to climb, power-glide, abseil, base-jump and
snowboard. It was a place for the ultimate adrenaline junkie. A place
to
voluntarily chuck yourself down the mountain and beg for broken bones. What a
mug’s game! What a bad joke. Performed by skinny, bum-fluff-faced idiots who
craved some kind of natural high, when you could get a perfectly respectable
high from a good bottle of whiskey and ten pints of Wifebeater. Bah, humbug.
Damn moaning granddads, and all that.

Dex banked the chopper, engines
pounding, rotors pulsing above. Far below in the sunshine glittered the Lagoon
of Serenity, and Dex realised the river he’d seen earlier, from his vantage
point on the high rollercoaster track, did indeed feed this lagoon. On the far
side of the water, the Death Rapids stretched away, all white and foaming and
dangerous looking, even from this height.
Another group of idiots, begging
to chuck themselves against the wrath and psychopathic nature of Nature, to
fuck with the God of the River and wonder why they came out the other end
either pulverised like dog meat, or in a body-bag filled with aqua. What a
bunch of morons!
Dex had had just about all the adventure he could take. He’d
overdosed on adrenaline. He’d pumped himself full of excitement until he wanted
to puke.
What’s wrong with sitting in front of the telly?
What’s
wrong with cups of hot chocolate
?
What’s wrong with languorous mornings
under the duvet, playing hunt the pickle with your giggling wife?
But no.
Dex had been forced into a situation where he was force-fed “adventure” and “fun”
and “danger” and “thrills,” all the specialities of the Theme Planet - and all
he wanted to do was find Katrina and the kids, and head home for a quiet life.

The chopper left the Lagoon of
Serenity and the Death Rapids far behind, and quickly - because this was the
terraformed magic of the Theme Planet! - the landscape shifted from forest and
rivers to a sudden desert, which seemed to emerge from nowhere. These were the
Lost Dunes, leading to the Caves of Hades. Sand stretched out for an eternity.
Huge, towering dunes seemed to fight one another, climbing and crawling over
one another to reach the sea... and Dex slammed along, cruising low, rotors
kicking up a huge desert storm in his wake.

“I just want to go home,” he
said, out loud, words startling him.

And in frustration, and pain, and
exhaustion, Dex realised he wanted to cry.

~ * ~

The chopper clicked
to itself as its engines attempted to cool under the
blaze of the desert sun. Dex jumped down, boots sinking a little in the sand,
shaded his eyes and stared at the Caves of Hades ahead. There was what could
only be described as a
slab
of rock, perhaps five kilometres wide, and a
kilometre high, that ran (as Dex had discovered from the brochures) all the way
to the sea.

The Caves of Hades.

Shit,
thought Dex.
There’s so many
of them!

He knew the Caves led to a secret
tunnel, another wonderful exploration adventure for the terminally enthusiastic
“holiday adventurer.” And the tunnel led across to The Lost Island - on which,
Jim had claimed, were imprisoned his wife and children. But now - now he had to
submerge himself in a mad cave complex searching for the hidden tunnel.
Great.

Dex made a low growling sound,
and checked his stolen Makarov. Looking back inside the chopper, he found the
armaments cache and raided it. He strapped on a bulletproof vest, and took an
SMKK and stash of magazines, and as many mini grenades as would clip to his
belt and fit in his pockets.

He climbed back out and stood in
the sand, feeling a little ridiculous. There was a sign a few feet away. It
read:

WELCOME
TO THE CAVES OF HADES!

HO HO HO!

HAVE FUN
IN THIS VERY SPECIAL

THEME PLANET
EXTRAVAGANZA!

AND REMEMBER... BE CAREFUL, BRAVE
ADVENTURER!

THERE’S
SOMETHING WITH TEETH IN HERE...

“For the love of God,” muttered
Dex, making sure his grenades were strapped on tight. All he needed now was to
bump into another family on vacation, and watch them run screaming as he, the
Mighty
Dexter,
strode forward less like a Colossus than some tarted-up Holiday
Action Man.

I’ve had better weeks,
he thought.

And I’ve certainly had better
holidays!

He strode through the sand, and
stepped up onto a rocky plinth that led to a wide walkway, which in turn led to
the hundred or so openings which fed into the Caves of Hades. Dex walked
forward, the sun beating against his back, and as he approached a cave picked
at random, a cool breeze, like sour breath, eased out to meet him.

A plaque read:

Here be
monsters

Dex frowned, and cocked the SMKK.
Stepping forward into the gloom and the damp, he said, “Oh yeah? Bring it on,
then.”

~ * ~

On high, jagged
cliffs
overlooking the ocean there was a vast black castle. Its walls were polished
granite, smooth and difficult to climb, and high above, circled constantly by
cawing green-and-grey gulls, there were soaring towers, crennelations along
huge battlements, slits for archers yards wide and gulleys through which to
pour boiling oil on attacking armies. The castle was bigger than big, as if
Theme Planet had seen pictures of old castles on old Earth, and thought
fuck
that, we can do bigger and better than that!
and had done. It was truly a
vast and imposing structure, and would have been near-impossible for any
attacking army to breach... unless they climbed up the advertisements. These
were positioned at regular intervals, and would have given any attacking soldiers
with grappling irons firm purchase on their way up to breaching the
battlements, killing the soldiers and savaging any handy nuns. The ads were for
items not
exactly
in keeping with the style of the vast black castle,
such as
turkey’s comedy gobbling condoms!
Go on, be
a
turkey - gobble gobble!,
and
sonja’s
fabulous chicken beard party beards! Get yourself a chicken beard today,
they’re gobble-gobble-chickentastic!
And
farter’s
beans! Fuck your digestion up good and proper, go on, be a farter: buy farter’s
beans - available in different sizes of barrel,
and
scorcher’s
fireworks! Guaranteed to blow your whole damn head off!
And
buy tiff
and ken’s new album, “dance the funky chicken, “ available on holo, proj-k, ggg
and firedisk... Let tiff and ken transport you to a world of croons, kooks,
googs and not-rights
..... Go on, buy
tiff
and ken,
they’re funky spunky, and you know you want to!

At the summit of the castle, in
big, chintzy, tacky, glowing neon letters that seemed just a touch out of
character with a historically accurate, if somewhat overlarge, medieval
military fortification, were the words:

MONOLITH RIDE MUSEUM

“It’s a reward,” said a wiry,
weathered old man, who wore a floppy hat and carried a back-pack. Amba glanced
at him, sitting on a rock and staring with beady eyes towards the castle. He
drank out of a canteen and reached forward, rubbing at what, presumably, were
sore, battered feet. Scruffy hiking boots sat to the man’s right. She imagined
she saw steam rising from his tattered, threadbare socks.

“A reward?” said Amba. “For what?”

The man frowned. “For
discovering
the Lost Island! For all those hardy, brilliant adventurers who have
travelled The Lost Dunes, negotiated the monsters in the wacky, dangerous Caves
of Hades, walked the long echoing avenues of The Secret Tunnel, and finally
emerged here, battered and bruised, but happy and filled with adventure! This
is the reward! The carrot, leading the donkey! This is why we’re here.” He
seemed a tad smug.

“Of course,” said Amba, turning
back to stare at the neon monstrosity on the cliffs. “It’s... a very special
looking place.”

“Authentic,” said the tourist.

“Genuine,” agreed Amba.

“It is quaint,” said the tourist.

“Picturesque,” agreed Amba.

“Well,” said the tourist, pulling
on his boots. “Time to go and explore,” he grinned, and standing, lifted two
walking sticks from where they rested against a rock.

“Why do you need those?” asked
Amba.

“It takes the pressure off my
knees on long-haul treks.”

“I suppose you’re quite the
expert walker and climber, aren’t you?” said Amba, smiling brightly.

“I certainly am, little lady.”

“Doesn’t it get lonely, all this
exploring and walking, on your own?”

“Sometimes,” agreed the tourist. “But
it gives me a good bit of time to think, to ponder over the complexities of the
universe, to muse over the conundrums of our very existence - being such tiny
and insignificant human beings.”

“I never thought about it like
that,” said Amba, her smile fixed in place.

They were silent for a while,
while the man laced up his boots. He stood, stretched, shouldered his pack,
grasped his walking sticks in readiness. “I say,” he said, “Maybe you’d like to
accompany me up to the Monolith Ride Museum? Many have claimed it holds the
wonder of Theme Planet’s ride technology, and a working model of the computer
that controls it all - the SA34000RAH. Well, the first incarnation, that is.
Model v1.0. I think it grew into something a lot more sophisticated since way
back in the hey-day of Theme Planet’s inception.”