Author's Note: This kept getting longer and longer. I think I may eventually expand this into a longer interlude, but for now, I just want to post what I have. I'm falling disastrously far behind on free time stuff this week. Unbetad.
"Coming Knocking"
As Jim Gardener was entering the shed outside to talk to the living batteries imprisoned there, a thin blue portal opened in Bobbi Anderson's kitchen. Agent Doc slid through quickly, his hand already on the button to punch it closed once he was through. For safety's sake, he had first portaled to one of the dead worlds touched by Orannis in the Old Kingdom universe before coming here. He would go through a different one on the back to HQ. Those planets no longer had any atmosphere; the electromagnetic particles that slipped through the portals would disperse harmlessly into the vaccuum, and only a very insignificant number of the molecules would follow him back home.
Hopefully. The fewer the better.
Doc had set the portal into the kitchen to be as far away from Gardener as he could be, just in case he had noticed the flash of blue. This was no fanfiction; Doc was now right in the canon setting, and there was no room to screw up, no option of letting events be disrupted.
The drawback to starting in the kitchen, however, was that Doc got a much too close-up view of the body that had once belonged to Bobbi Anderson. The body, burned and bloody thanks to Jim Gardener’s actions not long before, that clearly hadn't been human for quite some time now.
Reading King's descriptions of a Tommyknocker didn't do any justice to seeing one in the translucent flesh. Doc gasped, but then mentally reprimanded himself for doing so. The oxygen tank strapped around his back wouldn't last forever, and he had needed it before even getting here, in the airless world destroyed by Orannis. Doc hurried around the body and out of the kitchen.
In Bobbi's living room, Doc forced himself to ignore the various machines and gadgets Bobbi had installed under the influence of the Tommyknocker-mind that had invaded hers. Despite being cobbled together from batteries and eighties technology, their undeniably futuristic nature made for a weird contrast with the homey wooden construction of the living room, and its worn-out couch.
It was the desk against one wall that Doc sought. What looked like an old-fashioned typewriter sat there; it only looked that way, because anyone with a Tommyknocker's telepathy could run it without touching the keys. How far away had Bobbi said she could still use it? Five miles?
But thinking of that distance reminded Doc of the other time limit he had to keep in mind. Long before his oxygen ran out, nearly every Tommyknocker in Haven would be bearing down on this farm, having felt Bobbi's psychic screaming when Gard murdered her. Not long after, this house would be going up in flames. And that was why he had come, to rescue . . .
There. Next to the typewriter. The Buffalo Soldiers. Bobbi Anderson's final novel, written while she piloted a levitating piece of construction equipment in the forest behind her house, excavating a flying saucer.
The unpublished
unbetad
manuscript sat there, a stack of computer paper almost as thick as Doc's palms. He picked up the pile and carefully wedged it under his arm. He was terrified of the prospect of even one precious page slipping out of his grip, but he wanted the manuscript already in his hands when he opened the portal. The fewer molecules of this polluted air that followed him through, the better.
Which is why he was so distracted by the two sounds that started as he got the pages firmly and lovingly nestled into the crook of his arm. One was a sputtering old truck engine. Freeman Moss, the first of the former humans-turned Tommyknocker who would come to attack Gardener, had already arrived, much faster than Doc had expected. The fire would be catching soon.
The second was a female voice in Doc's head that said, Honestly, I don't know that it's worth saving.
Doc froze in place, and felt a chill creep up and down his spine. He thought of all the things that might have gone wrong.
A leak in the air pack somewhere I've been breathing the air this whole time and now I'm "becoming" one of them I can never go back to HQ now—
Hold on, there, admonished the voice. It's not you, and it's not them, this is just me. The old and unimproved, as Gard would say.
Then, Freeman Moss's mental voice interrupted, broadcasting to Gardener outside: Looks like Bobbi put at least one good one into you, you snake. It really was close to hearing someone talk, that Tommyknocker telepathy. Loud, and impossible to ignore. Different from hearing an Andalite's thought-speech, and different from the thoughts of Bobbi's ghost just now.
A ghost? I don't know about that, kid. There's been a lot of weird mind stuff going on in this town lately—although I suspect you know all about that, somehow. I think being psychic these last few months has let my mind last a little longer than my brain, if you can dig it. And I've got to tell ya, it's real good to think for myself again.
Doc mumbled around the mouthpiece of his breathing apparatus; really, he didn't know what to say. Bobbi's ghost—or at least, what he had thought of as her ghost while he had been reading—had indeed appeared to keep Gardener safe a couple of times right at the end of the novel, before eventually fading away. But Doc wasn't prepared to encounter her like this. And without a physical body, the neuralyzer Doc had brought along just in case wasn't going to accomplish anything.
I didn’t quite catch that. I'm not as good at reading minds as I was an hour ago, and that hick yelling at Gard out there doesn't help. But I think I got the jist of it. You didn't want anyone seeing you, and you think I'm trouble now. Well, don't sweat it, all right? I have a feeling I'm not going to be around much longer—wouldn't exactly want this to be a permanent set-up, anyway. All I care about now is Gard. But listen: that novel you got there? That’s not mine. I didn’t write it. The Tommyknockers did. The old and unimproved Bobbi Anderson never could have written anything that good, especially not in three weeks.
As Doc mulled over her words, a green light bloomed out in the dooryard. The light was bright, but the green was a sick and dirty one, and Doc closed his eyes against it. Soon after, he flinched and hugged The Buffalo Soldiers to his chest as Freeman Moss’s mental screams slammed into him. Straining to focus on his words against the not-quite-a-sound, Doc concentrated on his thoughts, trying to make them as clear as possible for Bobbi. That’s bullcrap, Mrs. Anderson, and you know it! The Tommyknocker that was in your body admitted it! They can make things work, but they don’t understand why things work. They’re only intelligent, not smart. They ran this entire town on batteries! You think creatures like that could write an entire novel? They aren’t capable of creativity, Mrs. Anderson. That was you. Freeman’s screams finally died down, as did the green light outside. Doc relaxed and thought his words more calmly. It was you. The Tommyknockers may have made the telepathic typewriter, they may have buzzed your brain to make you work yourself to death, but they couldn’t have created a story. Only you could have done this. He held the manuscript out in both hands, displaying the thickness—not that he had any clue where Bobbi actually was, so to speak. This right here is Roberta Anderson. And I’m here to make sure it survives this day.
Outside, the fuel tank of Bobbi’s truck exploded. It wouldn’t be long now.
Well, all right, then. You do whatever you want. But . . . just make sure, if it does get published, you keep that dedication page intact. He’s been a good friend to me. I’m going after him now, see if I can’t still be some kind of friend to him.
You’ve got it, Doc said. But somehow, he knew that whatever part of Bobbi Anderson he had speaking with was no longer there to hear it.
Next, it was Freeman’s truck’s turn to blow. Bits of flaming debris began to drift against the front of the house, and through the open door.
Doc carefully settled the manuscript into the crook of his arm again, then he took an unexpectedly ragged breath and frowned. I wasn’t supposed to stop for a chat, he thought. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, and they gave me just enough oxygen for that..
He moved away from the front door. A couple of objects in the living room had already ignited. His eyes focused on the RA, he very carefully and deliberately typed in the coordinates to the second of Orannis’s victims, despite his breathing growing more difficult. There was no time for errors now. A thin portal edged open. He slid through and immediately closed it, cutting himself off from Haven’s polluted air for, he hoped, the last time in his PPC career.
This world looked identical to Orannis’s other victim Doc had passed through on the way to the Stephen King world. The air back in Haven was toxic, and would have killed Doc on the spot if he had breathed much at all. But here, there was no atmosphere at all, and the danger of the oxygen tank running out was just as real. Still, Doc trekked across the dead world, getting as far away as he could from the spot where he had opened the portal out of Haven. The fewer molecules of Haven air that followed him back to HQ, the better for everyone.
He marched across that rock, listening to his breathing grow more and more strained as the tank’s supply grew thin. He already had the RA set to portal back to Medical Research’s quarantine room. Once Doc took his first completely empty breath, he clicked it open and slid through, then closed it. Dizziness was just beginning to cloud his mind as he yanked the breather out of his mouth. He drew in a full and wonderful breath.
He knew the MRD scientists would already be remotely monitoring the room’s atmosphere, and Doc’s own biology, for contamination. That was fine. He could wait. He had a way to pass the time. He lay down on the generic floor and set The Buffalo Soldiers down, neatly patting the edges of the stack until all the papers were perfectly squared. He turned the title page over and laid it face down next to the rest of the pile. He then did the same with the dedication page, which read so appropriately:
For Gard, who’s always there when I need him.
* * *
Author's Note: I hope this doesn't reek too much of "PPC agent chumming it up with a canon character." When I got the idea for this, I was expecting it to be much shorter, but I just kept uncovering more as I wrote. Bobbi's "ghost" or whatever does vanish from the narrative soon after the point in time when this story takes place, so I don't think the lack of neuralyzation is an issue. The Buffalo Soldiers is of course destined for la Musée des Univers Perdus. (I know it's not from a lost civilization, but it is lost, eh?) The novel's dedication is taken directly from the narrative in The Tommyknockers.
—doctorlit