The Medusa Compound: Episode 15

Holy shit, what a cliff-hanger Episode 14 was! So let’s not hang around like a bunch of kiwi fruit: on with Episode 15…

Instantaneously all four red sentinel robots let rip with their mesmeric wave emitters…

After a sustained blast, Magnuss was still yelling, “Aaargh!”

So he received another dose of advanced cyber-medicine…

Ten minutes later, Douglas, Shoreham, Wong, and Dongler watched as Magnuss approached them as they stood at a Café Puke Dispenser…

“Guys,” he said with a smile. “False alarm. But understandable: they had no idea these walls were so paper thin.”

He went on to describe the literary and acting antics of the repertory company from Nibblers Flatch. This was greeted with relief by the earplugs. Douglas, however, was less convinced. He had been spending the past three months attending crochet evenings in Nibblers Flatch. In all that time he had never set his eyes upon a theatre. This thought irked him as he departed…

Inside the Dyson Sphere cinema, the playback ceased and the machine’s cyber-voice invited both viewers to visit the urinal…

“It’s just through those doors on your right.” It informed them.

Although grateful for the intermission, Flaxwell was alarmed by the developments taking place on the so-called documentary. He made an understatement: “I don’t like the way this story is panning out.”

Gideon had decided that a little denial can be good for one sometimes:

“It’s just an amazing work of fiction, Flaxwell. A play, if you will. I mean, it can’t be real, can it! And like we said earlier: we’re thousands of light years from Earth. This place was probably abandoned before earplugs attained sentience. This is all one incredible coincidence. A story about a museum that really exists, featuring characters that also really exist, doing things that they almost certainly would in the circumstances. I bet a half-decent mathematician could argue that something like this would be inevitable eventually. So, is it real? Not at all.”

Flaxwell remained to be convinced. However Gideon’s argument did ease his concerns sufficiently to allow his regular character to emerge; so, as the playback resumed he raced Gideon to see who could regain their chair first…

On-screen Magnuss and Hair-Trigger were riding one of the museum’s ‘up’ ramps…

“I don’t know what to say, Hairy.” Magnuss said to a clearly doubtful stripy earplug. “I visited the offices to which that splendid fellow, Douglas Tetrahedron led me, and found a group of actors and their director running through their first dress rehearsal of a play they’d written, with which they hope to spend a season in the Museum of Future Technology. I even took a quick glance at the script: they’ve got you off to a tee.”

Hair-Trigger was only half-placated. “Well if you say so, Mags. But my internal bad-guy radar is pinging like a looney right now. I can’t shake off the thought that’s it really more than you think it is.”

They were on their way to visit the Chief Curator, Cushions Smethwyke. By the time they’d arrived, Hair-Trigger’s smile had returned. It fell slightly as Magnuss related his tale once again, but not so much that Cushions noticed.

“That’s a relief.” Cushions replied. “But perhaps you should take your brothers along…you know…just to make sure you haven’t been duped.”

Hair-Trigger was all for it. “Brilliant idea, Cushions. Come on Magnuss; there’s no time like the present.”

As a consequence of this, Magnuss and Hair-Trigger soon met with the other four Earplug Brothers on a main thoroughfare…

“A play, you say?” Eldest brother, Rudi inquired. “I’m a cartoon kind’a guy: plays are a bit high-brow for me – know what I mean?”

Valentine was more responsive. “Sho-nuf, man.” He said to the offer of a free show in the Civic Centre, “I can dig it.”

Chester and Miles, being the youngest of the brothers by some margin thought they probably had something better to do; but a smile and a “aw, come on” from Hair-Trigger convinced them otherwise. However, when they arrived in the rented office suite, all five guests became slightly wary and began to wish they weren’t there…

“Hey, Magnuss, man,” Rudi said to the middle brother, “why y’all standing over there? Someone smell bad or something?”

Whether Magnuss would have responded to this jibe from his brother, no one will ever know, because, at that moment five red sentinel robots from the future stepped from the shadows…