Authors: Mack Maloney
Hunter just stared back at the kid. He’d never seen anyone get so drunk so quickly.
“Now, I know I can’t compete with all the booty my father’s realm can throw at you,” the Prince went on, struggling to pronounce every last syllable. “God knows I’ve had that shoved down my throat all my life.”
He slugged the bottle again.
“But besides bringing you up here, I have my own token of appreciation to give you,” he said, adding:
“And some things are better than a nice home or money.”
With that he made a gesture to one of his many bodyguards. Through the haze of the celebration now, Hunter saw this man glide over and have a whispered conversation with the Prince. The man then handed a small yellow device to the royal son, gave Hunter a friendly wink, and disappeared back into the crowd.
The Prince examined the lemon-size device for several moments. He was very interested in the series of numbers blinking in the tiny window at the top the gadget.
“Excellent! This is an Echo-323,” he proclaimed. A murmur went through everyone within earshot. Even Berx stopped consuming his mug of wine to listen in.
“Really, my Prince? A three-two-three? I thought they were impossible to acquire…”
The Prince waved the device in front of Berx’s face and pointed to the numbers.
“Have you forgotten that I am a man of many powers?” he asked Berx somewhat sternly.
But Berx was ignoring him. He was captivated by the device he held in his hand.
“Someone in here
really
likes you,” he said to Hunter.
The Prince took another huge gulp of wine, then turned back to Hunter himself.
“Have you ever seen an Echo-323?” he asked him with an Imperial air.
“
How
?” was all Hunter could reply. He had no idea what any of them were talking about.
The Prince finished his bottle, broke open another, and then pushed Hunter farther along the seat. This opened up a space big enough for another body. Then the Prince hit a button on the small device. The next thing Hunter knew, a beautiful female…
projection
was sitting next to him.
Hunter stared at her, mouth agape, a bit of sweat forming on his sunburned brow.
“Echo… this is Mr. Hunter,” the Prince said with a drunken laugh. “Mr. Hunter, this is Echo…”
Hunter went to shake her hand, but his appendages were slow in responding. Or at least some of them were. He couldn’t stop staring at her—and she was staring right back. Finally she took his hand in hers, and for an instant he thought he’d be able to pass his fingers right through it. But nothing could have been farther from the case. Her hand felt warm, soft… friendly.
“Hello,
Mister
Hunter,” she said with a sly smile.
Hunter had only heard of holo-girls; he’d yet to see one in the flesh, or at least he didn’t think he had.
(There was no way to really tell, of course.) But this one before him was perfect. Face and shape.
Perfect. Her hair, blond and flowing. Perfect. Her voice, sweet, melodic.
Perfect
. Her eyes, blue and sparkling.
Perfect
.
“Watch this,” the Prince said. He pushed something on the device. Echo’s breasts began to grow. And grow. And grow. She was giggling, almost embarrassed. Just as it became clear that her top was about to burst, the Prince pushed something else. Her breasts began to shrink, almost until they were nonexistent. Echo giggled again.
The Prince gulped more wine, then pushed something else. Echo’s hair turned from blond to red.
Another push, her tight silver top became a simple white blouse. Push. Her skin-tight pants became a skin-tight skirt.
Push
. Her purple boots disappeared to reveal two very beautiful bare legs and feet.
Hunter was speechless.
This sure ain’t Fools 6
, he thought.
The Prince went to push another button—but one of his entourage leaned over and froze his hand in place.
“Better to give it to ‘im, sire,” the man half growled. “He’s the one who won the race. It’s
his
gift, not yours…”
But the Prince shoved the man’s hand away.
“I have to see if this thing is working properly, don’t I?” he bellowed at the bodyguard. “Our friend here is new at this. He might run into complications. You don’t want his first experience to be a bad one, do you?”
The hulking bodyguard replied: “My orders are to not let you ever—”
But the Prince cut him off with an icy, drunken stare.
“And I’m countermanding those orders,” he said. The tone in his voice indicated this was not the first time he’d barked those words.
Once again he turned back to Hunter.
“You don’t mind, old boy, do you?” he asked.
Hunter didn’t know what to say. He still had a hold of Echo’s hand, and he really didn’t want to let go.
“Mind what exactly?”
“That I take her out a bit, for a bit of a test ride,” the Prince stuttered.
“You’re unbelievable, sire!” another bodyguard said, disgusted. “No self-control at all…”
But the Prince was now ignoring his entire entourage.
It was up to Echo to break the impasse.
“You should let him run his test,” she finally cooed to Hunter. “It doesn’t take very long.”
The Prince let out a yelp of victory. Then he put his arms around Echo, pushed the device’s main control button—and they both disappeared.
“What happened?” Hunter asked, astonished. “Where did they go?”
Erx pushed a mug of wine toward him. “Just wait a few seconds,” he said.
Sure enough, there was a quick yellow flash… and the Prince and the Echo 323 were back. Not ten seconds had passed.
Echo looked the same, but the Prince’s appearance had changed completely. There was now more hair on his head, about a half inch of additional growth, and on his face as well. He was noticeably thinner, and his eyes were bleary. But he looked extremely content and calm. Very, very calm. Like a man who’d just spent a month or so on a deserted island somewhere with a very beautiful female. Which was exactly what had happened. Sort of…
“They went into the thirty-fourth dimension,” Erx explained. “Or is it the thirty-fifth? Either way, the Echo-323 is programmed to bring you to some paradise setting—wherever it is, it’s all projected anyway. She’ll morph any way you want her. Echoes have a large memory. That means you can just go… go far away, for a bunch of time. Days, weeks, however long you can stand it—then be back here before I take another sip of my drink.”
“What I miss?” the Prince squealed in delight.
But before anyone could reply, the club was suddenly filled with a blinding white light. The crowd was stunned. There were a few muffled screams and squeaks.
The bright light slowly condensed into a very powerful yellow beam that became focused on a spot about three feet away from Hunter’s table. The light began twirling, turning, forming a tunnel of sorts. Just barely visible near the source of the beam Hunter could see a translucent face. It was radiating a very warm, soothing light. The face seemed to be at the end of this very long tunnel.
The Prince shielded his eyes and finally got a good look at what was happening. “Oh, shit—it’s my father…”
Flash
!
The Prince disappeared.
Echo took one look at the situation, kissed Hunter on the cheek, pushed her own button, and then
flash
!
She disappeared.
Most of the crowd scurried away. Erx and Berx were frozen in place, though. So was Hunter.
The light finally dimmed a bit, enough for the figure at the end of the tunnel to be seen.
It was indeed the Emperor.
Or at least it looked like him.
He lifted his hand and pointed down at the table.
Flash
!
Hunter disappeared.
The next thing he knew, Hunter was standing in the middle of a desert.
Or at least it looked like a desert. It was flat for the most part, though there were some mountains directly to the east. It was dry and hot, too. But the “sand” beneath his feet felt more like tiny glass globules than authentic silica. This gave everything the same shimmering effect that Earth was famous for.
Floating two feet off the ground next to Hunter was the Emperor—or at least some approximation of him. He was dressed in a flowing, all-white gown with a golden aura surrounding it. His face was a complete blank. His arms were raised out on front of him, as if he were sleepwalking. The wind was blowing, yet his hair and clothes were not moving at all. In fact, Hunter could see right through him, clear to the other side.
What’s up with this
? Hunter thought. Like many things in the Fourth Empire’s Galaxy, it seemed as if the great O’Nay was there, yet at the same time, not really there at all.
Suddenly a viz-screen appeared out of nowhere. It nearly split Hunter’s forehead in two. He had really bad luck with these things. They always seemed to want to hurt him no matter where they popped in.
The man on the viz-screen looked as weird as the ghost hovering next to him. He had long white hair, a blank face, and that “Special” look in his eyes. He wasn’t an exact twin of the Emperor, but he was close.
An Emperor wannabe
?
The man in the viz-screen spoke to Hunter: “As the victor of the Earth Race, you will be allowed to cast eyes upon the holiest of holy things in the Empire. This is the Emperor’s wish.”
“You do all his talking for him?” Hunter asked innocently.
The man in the viz-screen seemed insulted. “The Emperor does not talk
directly
to his subjects,” he told Hunter, his voice dripping with arrogance. “Especially in the form you see before you.”
“There’s more than one of him?” Hunter asked, looking up at the motionless apparition.
“The Emperor has three modes,” the man in the viz-screen replied. “This one is his ‘sacred spirit.’ He’s calling to you now.”
Sure enough, the ghost was pointing to something over Hunter’s shoulder. He turned to see that they were actually standing near a group of plain white structures built astride a huge, flat, dry lakebed. The buildings looked absolutely ancient.
Flash
!
Suddenly they were standing at the front entrance of the largest building. A faded sign next to the door read: Domain 51.
Flash
!
Now they were inside the building itself, looking down at the entrance to a huge amphitheater contained within. There were dozens of soldiers in stark black uniforms standing at rigid attention around this sizable portal. The only means of illumination that Hunter could see was by candles; there were hundreds of them everywhere. Their flickering cast odd shadows on the Z-gun turrets built into the walls of this place.
Flash
!
Hunter was now inside the chamber itself. It, too, was lit only by candlelight. In the middle of the chamber was a huge black monolith. It was about a hundred feet high and the same measurement square.
It stood alone. A huge seamless, impenetrable presence.
Hunter didn’t have to ask what this was. He knew already.
It was the Big Generator.
It was guarded by another small army of black-uniformed soldiers. They were standing at attention in small groups scattered around the inner chamber. They did not seem to notice that Hunter and the Emperor’s ghost were there.
The chamber had a definite religious air to it. There was no sound. Hunter could see no means of access to the huge black box. There were no dials or switches or panel lights on the thing. No cables or wires running into or out of it. No controls, at least anywhere nearby.
The viz-screen appeared again. This time Hunter was able to duck before it brained him. The same guy, with the same blank expression, began talking to him again.
“From the Big Generator everything is possible in our Galaxy,” he said without a nanoiota of emotion. “It is a gift from on high. The power it generates goes everywhere and encompasses the realm. It runs our spaceships. It runs our planets. It runs everything on our planets. From the dimmest panel bulb on the most distant world to the prop core of our largest M-Class Starcrasher. All of the energy comes from here.”
“Fascinating,” Hunter said. It was hard not to be impressed. “How does it work?”
The man in the viz-screen suddenly looked nonplussed.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Hunter shrugged. Could he have been any clearer?
“I mean, ‘How does it work?’ ” he asked again.
The man in the viz-screen started stammering. “Well… that’s a closely guarded secret… the most closely guarded secret in the Empire…”
But Hunter persisted because he really wanted to know.
“Do you mean
how
it works is a secret?” he asked. “Or the fact that no one
knows
how it works?”
Even the Emperor’s ghost turned slightly red on that one.
The man in the viz-screen started to say something.
But before he could answer—
Flash
!
Hunter now found himself standing inside a huge apartment.
It was empty of furniture except for one couch and a floating bed. There were windows everywhere, and judging from the harsh glare flooding in on him, it was easy to guess that he was atop a building somewhere deep in downtown Big Bright City.
His new home
.
But before he could take one step or have one more thought, there came a stern pounding on the apartment’s front door. Hunter quickly walked down the hallway and activated the security screen next to the main entrance.
He saw a small army of Imperial Guards looking in on him.
Damn…
Could these be the Emperor’s bodyguards coming for him? Maybe to arrest him on a charge of insolence or blasphemy?
No… these guys were wearing different uniforms than the ones he’d just seen out in the desert. They were carrying bigger guns as well.
He slid the door open.
“Can I help you?”
The six monstrous soldiers didn’t say a word. Instead, they stepped aside to reveal that someone was with them.