Part 25

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Chiana gawked around, amazed to see everything in the M aisle had resumed as if the attack in the N aisle had never happened. "Your head always this di-disassociated?" Chiana asked, walking with John toward the table at the center of the aisle.

"Disassociated, no. Distracted, yeah" John winked, guiding her with him to a seat with a hand on her hips. He sat down, thinking to pull her down into his lap. Instead he found himself sitting with her hips and legs with him and her upper body still in the air looking over the table. "Oops." John froze. After a moment to realize he was seeing what he thought he was, John gingerly stood the hips up and placed them back on. He carefully lifted his hands back to make sure it'd stay together. He closed his hands and saw it was all back together again. "Didn't know these Pips required assembly."

Chiana leaned over a cake, famished. She stuck her fingers in and pulled out a handful. She ate it hungrily before realizing she wasn't real and wasn't actually hungry. It tasted nice but didn't have any substance. When she tried feeling it better, she found her hunger just as false. "Frell. Fake body, fake hunger, fake foods...."

"Gonna be a supermodel?" John asked.

"Frell this. Well if I'm gonna waste my time faking eating, think I'd rather waste my time faking a frell" she smirked and helped herself to a seat on John's lap. John smiled boyishly and slid his hands around her lovingly.

"John this is just a diversion!" Harvey popped up over his shoulder, shooing away a sudden rain of confetti.

John looked twice, once annoyed, then even more annoyed. "Look in the P aisle for "parasite" if you can't figure out why I wish you'd get lost, Harv" he tossed his thumb over his shoulder. "And those Marvel folks are gonna miss their superhero costume. What do y'all say ladies, do we want him in our party?"

"I think not" the librarian whisked her fork, gesturing Harvey to leave while she looked around down her nose. "Is there any more cake?"

"I don't think our Pip wants her cake" John offered while Chiana licked his cheek.

The librarian perked up and took the cake in front of Chiana and John, eating the frosting first.

"You should be working on more important matters, John" Harvey popped up on the opposite side of his chair to the librarian. "This isn't your birthday."

"Hell it isn't even my party, it's the snooty gal" John gestured Harvey to look to another guest at the table, the red head with subtle scale-like traces on her skin. "Sputnik over there."

"Why do you care if it's her birthday?" Harvey growled.

"It's not!" John was busy sliding a hand around Chiana's hard sculpted hips. He gestured over to Sputnik with his other hand. "Is it, Sputnik?"

"No" Sputnik smiled like a contented cat, delicately moving her giant birthday hat into a better fit over the knobs of hair she had. "It is my unbirthday. Un-birthday" she enunciated as if they couldn't understand her the first time. John rolled his eyes and Harvey hissed his annoyance. "A marvelous custom, really, from the planet....?" Sputnik widened her eyes at John.

"Wonderland. Alice."

"Alice, in the Wonderland quadrant" she informed Harvey with her more exacting interpretation.

"Today is also my unbirthday" the librarian nodded her head at her point.

"Unbirthday?" Chiana asked, halting her grinding on John's lap.

"Yes" Sputnik bugged her eyes and barred her teeth at Chiana. Either that, John thought, or she was trying to glare and really overdoing it. "Why celebrate one birthday a year when you can celebrate 364?" Sputnik continued. "Clearly the superior option if one is to suffer his culture at all."

"Really?" Harvey stood. "I must confess I agree with you. It is often insufferable."

"Hey hey do I sense romance in the air?" John hollered. "And it smells mighty fishy! It must be you two" he smiled at Harvey. "Unless you still wanna be a giant centipedia."

"That wasn't me John, it's an illusion, created by some device that's been-"

"-In the event you hadn't noticed, this is my unbirthday party" Sputnik interrupted. "I don't care what you want to be, I expect you to seat me on your lap or be off with you."

"You'd hate that wouldn't you, Harv?" John leaned close to Harvey.

Harvey growled, removed the superhero head wrap and waited by Sputnik's seat for her to get up. Sputnik stood, Harvey duly seated and Sputnik smugly sat on his lap.

The librarian glowed at the cake she set in front of herself and whined some high pitched sound of glee. But before she could attack the cake, she was interrupted by a string of people lining up with books. She rolled her eyes, pulled out a stamping kit from a small drawer at the center of the table and started stamping a due date in the books.

John chuckled from the teasing of Chiana's tongue at his neck. "Distractions...." he chuckled again.

"Now that makes us both, are you satisfied?" Harvey glared aside at John while Sputnik's hand caressed the side of his face and his hands came around her waist.

John pointed at Harvey. "Nnno" he paused with his mouth open, hearing a couple of snapping sounds seemingly coming from Chiana. He looked at her. She shrugged a shoulder. "I still gotta hear out Chi. Okay your turn" he told her.

"Yeah" she said just before the teapots piped up another round of music. Chiana leaned over and tapped a finger on one, curious. John waved his hand in front of Chiana's face. She looked back at him and slowly leaned back against him. "That Harvey you thought you saw spreading dust is" she breathed out the words with what sounded like a very shallow breath of air "can hurt me, really, he's dangerous, and keeping me from that W aisle. That Harvey saved me" she smirked at Harvey "he's a clone of the other one that was put in your head by the other one who's an enemy of yours" her hands slid into his pants. "That giant worm one's a fake."

"Wait wait-" John caught hold of her wrists. "How did you get all that? Where did you get all that?"

Chiana persisted, getting her hands free and sliding them back into his pink and red heart boxers. "Can you feel that?"

"Oh man."

Chiana smiled to herself. "Was all in one of the....primitive ground wood bundles titled "Harvey" in the H aisle. U-under the dust."

"You can- Harvey and I are allergic to the dust, we get all numb!"

"Doesn't affect me.....nnot numb at all" she smirked.

"All right" he smiled knowingly at her "how many other stops did you make on the way to the W aisle?"

"Well I didn't waste that kinda time" she smirked back at him.

"Time" The librarian muttered and stamped a book. She dropped the book and gasped in horror. "Wrong date!" she screamed.

"Wrong date!" everyone else yelled, except Harvey, John and Chiana, who all dove for cover just under the table. Shots rang out, the Romeo & Juliet reader running up to the end of the desk and taking cover behind her enormous book.

"I thought my head was, was frelled up!" Chiana remarked.

"Another random freakout?!" John peeked his head up over the table and yelled, incredulous.

"Yeah you really got to calm down!" Chiana told him and nodded, planting a hand on the top of her head after a shot took her hair off down the center of her head.

"Reverse Mohawk!" John pointed at her head. Her look was just about sharp enough to cut his own hair off. "Oop. Smart one, John, piss off the only one on your side...."

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"Very well, I'd best look at the rabble. What ever is it that anyone could want by-" Larran tilted his head slightly when the patio doors were unsealed and opened by Kastara. The lanky Bannik slave moved aside, his gaze fixed onto Larran.

Larran looked across the groups massed along the perimeter garden and the walkway. Most gathered around fires they'd made in disposal cans they'd dragged into place here and there. The groups spilt into the lanes and crowded the walkways in front of the buildings facing his estate. They were more varied than the crowds at any commerce station he'd seen. Many of them sat around or stood idly and sang, in a bad Luxan as best he could tell. Something about wanting to live.

"Oh look, the traveling vagrant singing anarchists of love have returned from the ancient past" Larran sneered and walked back inside. "Maybe I should throw a party, I already have the music." Satisfied that the servant noticed his contempt, his mind wandered. "But I still am curious who became so desperate for my office as to try this stunt with these....powerless plebeians?"

"They want her, Minister."

Larran looked ahead to see a man standing between himself and the doorway to the room. The young man was unfamiliar at first glance, but soon Larran remembered his face from a threatening message he'd received once. The authorities had identified him as Bursamen, a minor militant rebel of the so-called Nerri's Resistance Militia. He had wanted the artifacts.... "Her?" Larran led.

Bursamen shook his head once. "If they don't see her freed, they will come in and get her." Bursamen kept a polite smile on his face. For the first time in his life he was involved in rebellion and not feeling hostile. He felt almost euphoric in fact. If this was the end of his life, at least he was playing at a level he never imagined reaching.

Larran glared. The rebel left no room for diversion. Larran looked over his shoulder, picturing the rabble outside attempting to break into his estate, only to be hurt or killed by the protective shielding around his estate, or if they should somehow enter, slaughtered and neutralized by the authorities when they arrived to remove them. That Bursamen had likely been let in was the more immediate problem. Larran snarled and strode to the door, passing by Bursamen, who did not attempt to stop him. "Keep my guest comfortable" Larran ordered Kastara.

Larran strode from the room, at first hurrying toward the laboratory where Chiana and Crichton should have been relocated by now. With a thought of the rabble outside and the rabble he'd just met inside, he decided to call on the Authority Guide for the region and summon the enforcers to get rid of the rabble, and take a few more steps as well....Larran changed his course toward the nearest of his offices.

Pulling out the communicator pad he kept on himself for business, he made a few entries. The display changed to show him the location of the tracking devices implanted in his slaves. A few servants were in the laboratories as they should be, and a few were wandering around doing maintenance.

Once in the office, Larran took out a sentinel controller from a cubicle in a wall. With the controller, he activated the remainder of his sentinels to begin guarding the complex, with the trackers of his servants also serving to exempt them from the sentinels' observation. Satisfied, Larran opened a communication link to the Authority Guide's office.

Larran watched the trackers while he waited. Feeling a flash of fury at Chiana for having destroyed one of his prized sentinels, he considered excluding the tracker he had placed in her from the list of targets the sentinels were not to attack. He decided he would leave her excepted from sentinel attack. A thin smile sharpened his face. "Should you try evading me when you return, you will do so at your own peril" he muttered to himself, entering Chiana and the servers into a program for the sentinels to hunt should he activate the option. "And the rest of you betray me at your peril."

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"It's not random, John!" Harvey yelled across the table while the pulse fire and debris flew everywhere. "This is a method to distract you while an attempt is made to reset your memory." A shot blew Harvey's head clean off. It rolled under the table. Chiana weaved around the chairs and legs of the table, retrieved his head and handed it back to Harvey.

"Well it ain't-!" John yelled across the table before realizing Harvey had lost his head. John ducked back under the table.

Harvey ducked under the table as well and put his head back on. After shaking his head to see if it stayed on, Harvey complained "Must you insist in believing anything is possible?"

John produced a pulse pistol and aimed it at his head. "You want it the other way, Mr. Reality?"

Harvey paused. "I concede your point."

"Hey Harv, when I'm right" John stared him down "I'm right."

"When he's right" Chiana added, getting on her knees with a teacup in one hand and a teapot in the other "he's right. He's right. Right? Right."

"Well it's not resetting" John continued "it's just getting upsetting, how do you account for that, Harv?"

"Fortunately -for me- that's not my problem, John" he leered a smile at John.

"Well you know how my problems have a way of becoming your problems, Harv? You're just dying for me to ask you what you think, go on. Give us the dirty lowdown."

"Unfortunately I have only as much information remaining to me as you do" he replied, watching Chiana try to pour a cup of tea from an empty teapot. She shook it vigorously, listened closely to the pot, and then poured out a cup full.

"C'mon Harv....you mean you've spent all your life in somebody's head and all you learned was how to play Trivial Pursuit with my memory banks? Are you neural clone or a game show host? Make up my mind."

Harvey looked back for a moment while Chiana handed John a cup of tea. "Pot was broken, but a good whack fixed it" she explained and nodded. "It's good."

"Never would've guessed you'd go for tea, Pip. Thought you were more for Vodka."

"Got any?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Tea is good" she nodded.

"May I?" Harvey reached out.

"Have the pot." Chiana handed him the pot.

Harvey made a polite nod, took the pot and noticed it was empty. He shook it vigorously, listened, reached up onto the table, got a cup, and went to pour the tea. But the pot stayed empty. He growled at it and sneered at his empty teacup.

"Hey, let's focus here" John waved his hand for Harvey's attention. "What's the lowdown from your seat on the bus?"

Harvey shifted, perking up. "Assuming from my own....experiences. This very dangerous character I rescued your "Pip" from was some extension of some sort of device implanted in your brains."

"Brains?" Chiana looked at him, wide eyed and expectant. Meanwhile she took the teapot, cracked it in half with her hands and poured the cup full it suddenly contained into Harvey's cup. "Device? What- kind of a device? A device we control or a device that controls us?"

"Oh life has a natural proclivity against the existence of any means of mind control" Harvey opinioned.

"That's comforting, if a hassle" John replied with a dry smile and brows squinted low. John put his fragmented memories together while he looked at Harvey. He reckoned Harvey was a neural clone that came to be in his head when a device was put in his head. He had nothing more specific than some vague sense that the device was removed but something of Harvey remained. Always unwelcome yet ubiquitous. The way Chiana looked to him, John figured she knew at least as much as he did.

"We- we can control it then?" Chiana looked between them, before closing her mouth. It looked like she'd thought better but was trying desperately to be upbeat.

"Oh I doubt it" Harvey opinioned. "And it would have its own program. But- it isn't working" Harvey smiled up at John wickedly.

John pointed a finger at them. "Trying to keep my memories buried...."

"Which it was probably designed to do, probably until an intended point, when it could be removed, presumably to allow you to remember what it intended to withhold" Harvey continued.

"But it's in his game!" Chiana gestured to John with a gleeful cackle.

"Yes obviously we're in your contexts, John" Harvey agreed "and that can't be what was intended."

"Then what gummed the works, Sabu? Pip? You?" John toyed.

Chiana watched John's sly looks at Harvey, like a predator in a deadly serious game with his prey. He was engrossed in the thought that he was playing games with Harvey, Chiana considered. John probably assumed Harvey was directly part of the problem. John had been with Harvey too long and it was all entirely too intimate for John to be objective. But she couldn't remember if she was there when he was first given Harvey. The attempt to recall ran her mind over the first things she remembers for certain, and a thought occurred. "T-the um" Chiana tapped her temple "enforcers."

John and Harvey both looked to her. "Oh yeah" John said. "Hey now there was finally something worse than a Scifi Channel "reality" series. Those extreme visors man, we took off to get free of those RoboCops from hell- hey no offence Harv but I'm not sure we want you around for this part of the discussion" he looked at Harvey.

"Fine" Harvey backed slightly. "It isn't as though you could keep any secret for long...." he enjoyed impressing on John.

"Watch for pulse fire" Chiana teased after Harvey.

Harvey stood. A shot rang out. Harvey's decapitated head dropped to the floor facing John. "That's not funny John" Harvey's head complained. His body picked up his head and walked away while John and Chiana snickered.

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