Mad Max: Fury Road - I spoil all the things.

(content note: slavery, lack of bodily autonomy, post apocalyptic stuff,)

[Added after I finished writing] I, uh, think I had a point.  Not sure what it was.  This ended up being just a play by play reaction dump.[/added]

The movie, in my opinion, started off too slow.  Other than that, I loved the thing.  I do have complaints and world building questions and things I would have liked to see more of, but it's officially the best Mad Max movie yet and a really good action movie in general.

People who are assholes say that the movie is trying to sneak feminism into movies using explosions as cover.  Two things.  First off, as Lonespark pointed out to me, "Feminism and Explosions" (or was it "Feminism with Explosions") sounds like a movie well worth watching.  Second, it's not.

It looks feminist because everything else is so crap in comparison but years from now, if we've made decent progress in the world, people will watch it (I think it'll hold up over time) and won't think feminism.  What makes it attractive to feminists is that there should be loads of fucking movies like it.  The things that are feminist are things that shouldn't have to have an "-ist" attached to them at all.

It takes bodily autonomy seriously.  It takes female person-hood seriously.  It understands that it's ok for a movie to have a bunch of women in the cast.  It understands that women should talk to each other about things that it makes sense for them to talk to each other about which is a category not limited to men (or shopping, or feminine coded activity, or other stereotypes.)

None of these things are supposed to be feminist.  In a perfectly egalitarian world there would still be feminist movies (just like there would still be civil rights movies of all kinds), but this wouldn't be one of them.  It would just be a movie.

-

Ok, so, to start off, Max isn't quite sane, he's haunted by the ghosts of his wife and, especially, daughter.  He failed to protect them, they're dead, and he's constantly trying to get away from audio and visual hallucinations of them.

This gets to something where it's good to look check things because I remembered the order of the original films wrong, I thought the first one wasn't first and was a prequel, but it turns out they came out in chronological order.

The first movie covers him becoming a broken man with nothing to live for.  His wife and, in the original, son are murdered partway through and he goes on a revenge spree that, once over, leaves him with nothing.  He drives off.

Then the apocalypse happens (previously it was a mere dystopia) and the movies worthy of one's time takes place.  The thing is, by the time the movies start Max has completely moved on from the death of his wife and child.  Revenge apparently allowed him to put it behind him.

I'm not particularly a fan of people haunted by the ghost of their creepy dead child, but at least this new Max has a response to their deaths beyond, "I'm gonna kill everyone responsible and then forget about them."

Anyway, he gets captured.  He's useful for his blood.  Healthy people are hard to come by, and apparently blood transfusions help the not-healthy enforcers of the big bad warlord.  (Joe.)

Enter Furiosa.  The citadel, where the Joe rules, is tapped into an aquifer.  He controls the only major water source seen in the movie, uses it to grow plants, and additionally has human slaves that he milks.  It does not produce oil (thus can't produce gas.)  It does not produce bullets.  Thus it has trade with places that do produce those things.  Thus Furiosa.

Furiosa is a high ranking member of Joe's society and is taking a shipment to those places to bring back a shipment of gas and bullets.  She's got a heavily armored eighteen wheeler and escort vehicles.

Also, she has a prosthetic left forearm.  No one talks about this in the movie because there is no reason to.  When, for whatever reason, she doesn't have the prosthesis, she is not magically made useless.  (It is a painfully and repeatedly bad thing in fiction that has people who use assistive devices are completely unable to function without them.  See: "I'm slightly nearsighted... I dropped my glasses, I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING," for a very common example.)  She obviously isn't just as capable without her prosthesis because if she were there would be no reason to use it, but she's still pretty damn capable (which matches my extremely limited real world observation.)

All of which is to say that the movie portrays a character with a non-standard body well and doesn't ruin it by patting itself on the back for doing so.  That is so fucking rare.  Well, rare in a movie that's not about someone having a disability.  There are some good biographies out there.  But off the top of my head when it comes to non-biopics only three movies I like come to mind that do that.  this is one of them.  And that is bullshit, there should be so many more.

Anyway: Furiosa.  The plot starts when she makes a hard left turn for unexplained reasons.

The warlord panics and runs through his place (which is when we get a look at his plant growing and milking operations) and realizes that his "breeders" are gone.  They're slaves; they're breeding stock.  Five beautiful and, perhaps more importantly, healthy women with whom Joe has sex to produce heirs.

Even the reasonably healthy people we'll meet later in the movie are amazed at how healthy these five women are, so presumably they were taken specifically because of their health in this post-nuclear-apocalypse world, chosen from the entire population he controls.  Even Joe the warlord isn't free from being damaged by the carcinogenic nature of the world, but they are.  He wants healthy heirs.

These slaves are running away because they believe that no one should be owned, not them, not the children they may one day have.  Their leader is estimated to be a month or so from giving birth.  There is a second reason which is exclusively about the children that may have: they don't want them to be warlords.

By their own accounts they seem to have lived pretty well if you ignore the glaring fact that they lacked bodily autonomy.  They don't ignore that fact, as well they should not.  I'm not going to talk about rape, because the movie doesn't, but because of their status as breeders their lack of bodily autonomy by definition included that.  Like I said, I'm not going to talk about it, but I wanted to have an acknowledgement that that is what must have happened, because otherwise it might seem like I'm discounting it because they weren't injured or some such.

So, Furiosa has gone AWOL with the breeders, her crew doesn't know that.  They just know that the boss has made an unexpected turn.  I think that there was a missed opportunity here.  The people who are working for her owe their ultimate loyalty to Joe, but their boss is Furiosa.  Granted a high speed chase while various people try to kill you isn't the ideal time to try to convince people to join you in treason, but I wonder if someone of them might have sided with her if they'd known that she was going to "the green place" with slaves she's freed.

(The green place is where Furiosa is originally from.)

Anyway, I said that her making the left turn set off the plot, and so it does.  Joe the warlord musters his entire army to chase after his stolen slaves.  He doesn't just see it as someone having stolen his property (the slaves themselves) he sees it as his children having been stolen.

He calls for aid from the city state that produces gas and the city state that produces bullets.

Worth pausing for world building points here.  Most of America is water rich.  We have severe problems because we're people-heavy, we grow crops that can't be sustained with local water, we move water all over the place, and so forth, but come apocalypse most of America isn't going to be screwed over for water.  A lot of it will, there is no doubt, but much of it not so much.  We in many parts of America can therefore forget that water is the most valuable resource there is.  Fertile land is an important second, but it's useless without water.

Mad Max is an Australian apocalypse.  It remembers that water matters.

The people who have the oil and the people who have the weapons have to bow to the people who have the water.  Part of this is because the citadel is not at ground level so they can't just drive in and take the place.  The rest of it is because siege is impossible,  Even if the water-having people run out of gas and weapons, so what?  They've got water and food, the people on the outside wouldn't.

So now there are three armies converging on Furiosa, and she's heading through enemy territory anyway which means that she's already picked up other adversaries.

At this point I said to Lonespark that it seemed like the three places were ripe for conquest if anyone was watching.  With the armies out, there are presumably only skeleton crews defending home turf.

So where is Max in all this?  A prisoner.  Joe the warlord has appropriated Norse Myth.  His soldiers live and die by his command in hopes of being reborn in Valhalla.  Now in the biggest conflict that's shown up, a war-boy named Nux looks like he'll have to sit it out because he needs blood.  Max is his donor.

He refuses to sit it out and goes to die in glorious battle.  But he needs the blood.  He brings Max with him strapped to the front of his vehicle.

A couple of notes.  One, there are no electronics.  Signals are done via mirrors reflecting sunlight (for fixed positions) and colored flares.  This is why no one on Furiosa's rig or in her escort knows that she's gone AWOL and is committing treason.

Two, warlord Joe wants his slaves back alive and untouched.  That means that when the pursuit eventually catches up they end up helping her by fighting off the enemies who were attacking her because that's the immediate threat.

Furiosa's treason is only discovered by those with her when she drives into a sandstorm to lose the pursuit.

--

The reason that I feel like the movie started too slow is that this is when things really get going.  Max wakes up after the sandstorm.  He had prevented Nux from going out in a literal blaze of glory, and now somewhat more free he is able to pull out the tube transporting his blood.  He is not, however, able to break the chain connecting the two.  His attempt to simply break Nux fails because the only thing to try with is a shotgun that doesn't work.

He hears noise and carries Nux, the chain, the vehicle door the chain went through, and the broken shotgun toward the noise.

There he finds Furiosa and the breeders.  It's time they got names.  They are, The Splendid Angharad, Capable, Toast the Knowing, The Dag, and Cheedo the Fragile.  Honestly, I didn't pick any of that up.  I'm not good with names.

Angharad is the leader.  They're using bolt cutters to remove their chastity belts, also getting water from the tank on the transport.

Max holds them at gunpoint (recall that the gun doesn't work) to force them to share water and cut the chain.  Getting the water works out, the chain leads to a three way fight because Nux wakes up.  Eventually a gun that does work is introduced.  Max ends up with the gun, the only shot fired in a miss.  Nux ends up with the clip.  The two team up to apparently win, Nux is the one to get the chain off Max, and is going on about how they can have whatever they want now that they've captured the breeders alive and unharmed, at which point Max turns on Nux and steals the truck.

Max is kind of an asshole.

Furiosa is smart, she's made her truck so that it can't run for long unless she starts it using a specific sequence, so they get back to the truck and end up all heading off together with Max holding everyone at gunpoint.

Shared fighting and they end up in an uneasy alliance.

More stuff.

Nux misses his second chance for a glorious death.

-

Max and Furiosa are shown as equals, not in every way because that would be silly, Max is better at some stuff, Furiosa is better at other stuff.  The others have basically nothing in the way of combat to offer.  So they do other things.  One of the first impressive things they do is be human shields because Joe will not let anyone shoot them.  It works out for a while, but then bad things happen and they lose Angharad.

Angharad was the leader of the "breeders", she was Joe's favorite wife.  She was the one who convinced the others that people should never be owned.

There's major fallout for all involved.

Cheedo wants to go back.  Compared to everyone else they lived well and if the alternative is death it seems pretty appealing.  Most movies would treat her as a coward to be dismissed, instead the others argue with her, try to convince her to stay with them (and succeed.)  This is good.  This is good because people get to determine for themselves what they will and won't endure.

Nux is on the rig, he'd be in a great place to strike were he not in utter despair.  He knows that Joe, to him more than a warlord but instead the leader of the cult, the person who would deliver him to Valhalla, saw Nux's decision to bring Max result in the death of Angharad.  he knows that his third attempt at glorious death has failed and thinks the gates are forever shut to him.

Joe is in mourning because what was one month away from being his son died.  He's a lot less broken up about the fact that Angharad is dead.

There is moving on.  Capable finds Nux and comforts him, then the rig gets stuck in the mud.  Mud needs water, but it isn't good water.  The trees are dead.  Other than crows there's no apparent life here.

The others find out about Nux when he offers to help, which he does.

Also, Max managed to admit he's not the most awesome person ever when he takes two of the three shots they have with a long range rife, misses, and gives it to Furiosa in defeat.  She makes the remaining shot count.

At this point Warlord Joe is still in mourning and only one vehicle is following them.  Furiosa took out their light.  Max is able to beat the people left in the car and bring back guns and ammo.

They move though a boggy area with with people on stilts, four stilts each (hands and feet) that we never learn more about.  Who are they?  They appear peaceful.  Who are these people?

-

When they reach Furiosa's people they find that the green place is gone.  The water went bad and the nasty place they just drove through is what was once the green place.  There aren't many left of her people.  Old women on motorcycles.  One not quite so old one.

I love the fact that when her home died around her one of them preserved seeds.  She's tried, but the seeds haven't taken anywhere, but she keeps the seeds.  She's someone who is looking out for the future by preserving the past.  Once she finds fertile soil she's gonna plant those things.

The initial plan is to take the motorcycles further in the same direction, across seemingly endless salt flats on the hope that, on the other side, they'll find something.  They have enough fuel for a hundred and sixty days.  Max doesn't go.  He sees his daughter's ghost with the others, and heads out to them and gets them to stop.  He points out that they have a green place, they know where it is.  The citadel.

With the army after them it isn't defended, Nux is a war-boy so he can bluff that he captured them to get them up to the protected level, and they can take over with minimum risk.  All they have to do is punch through three armies, block off a narrow pass, and not get dead.

Remember, they just got fully armed, so this is the time for a very long, extended, kinetic, momentum aided, fight scene and is fucking awesome.

When the first of Furiosa's people died, in battle, after being impressive, only taken down by being hit by a war-eighteen-wheeler, I commented that she definitely got into Valhalla.  In fact, all of the good guys who die from this point out definitely earned their entrance.

Angharad I'm not sure about because of technical details, she actually died during a brief halt in combat of non-combat reasons.  She definitely deserved a good afterlife, but Valhalla has specific rules that I'm not completely clear on the technicalities.

-

One of the final great deciding moments involved Cheedo.  Remember her?  The one who wanted to give up, surrender, and go back.

Things are looking bad.  Furiosa is going to fall to her death, Max is, I think, having trouble getting back into the fight, Nux is occupied driving, and pretty much everyone else who can fight is dead or dying.

Cheedo surrenders.  People are shocked and dismayed at her defection, until, when there are people who might kill her in front and behind, she gives Furiosa the hand up needed.

I like this.  I like this so damned much.  She has no skills whatsoever that apply to the situation, she isn't able to help with the fighting, but she does an incredibly brave, high risk thing because something that she can do is offer someone a hand, and that allows Furiosa to get back into the fight and thus results in their ultimate victory.

-

Nux died blocking the pass.  The initial plan of deception can't work.

Furiosa needs blood to live, Max provides it.  The movie begins with Max's blood being taken from him against his will, it ends with him giving it up for free.

Showing the warlord's dead body rallies the commoners to their side because he was an asshole.

But getting up is a problem.  And here is another thing that's nice.  The adults in power don't know what to do.  The above ground fortress doesn't just have adults though.  The warboys come from somewhere.  It is the children being indoctrinated into being child soldiers who crave fiery death are the ones who give passage to Furiosa and her crew.

Max separates from the others to go off on his own, but unlike the other Mad Max movies he isn't on his own.  He's in a crowd of the common people.  Common people who will no longer be kept in destitution.

The water is delivered to the masses by the women who were kept as slaves to be milked.

-

Random other things:

Prayers to whatever gods are listening are prayers that I have prayed myself.  It was nice to see it.

With the Norse references there's a good chance that Furiosa ending up as one eyed and apparently in charge was an Odin reference.  She'd make a good king of the gods.

I wish there had been more of her story.  She's the only female driver, she's the only woman we see with any power.  How did she attain that position?  It presumably involved compromising her morals a lot.  She says she's hoping for redemption.  I think that's why she took the "breeders" even though she'd have a better chance of making it if she hadn't.  She hoped that she could make up for some of what she did to survive.

I wish there had been more of how Angharad convinced Furiosa to take them, and how they even got on to the truck.  They were pretty thoroughly secured.  It had to be part prison break part heist.

Stealing the poor from the rich may well be the most noble form of theft in existence (assuming you give the poor their freedom) and yet I feel like it's underrepresented in our fiction.

-

Stuff.

The sound of one hand clapping

So kōans came up and the only I know best is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

This, though, isn't a kōan anymore.  We know.

In music a clapper has two pieces of wood to be the hands connected by a joint of some kind, often times a hinge.  It makes sense, since it basically does what hands do to clap.  It doesn't help us answer the question of one hand clapping because it has two "hands".

In party favors a clapper is something like this:

The important thing to notice about it is that it has three hands.  Wave it back and forth and it will produce the sound of three hands clapping.

This we can work with.

Now that we know the sound of three hands clapping, and given that the sound of two hands clapping is a known quantity, the sound of one hand clapping can be discovered via simple subtraction.

What would you like me to get back to?

I have a lot of unfinished projects because finishing projects isn't really something that I do that much or that well.

If I had world enough and time (and inspiration and energy and effort) I'd return to them all and they'd become a bunch of finished projects.

Even then, though, I couldn't return to them all at once.  Some things would have to come first.

So, I have the question of this post.  What would you, commenters, lurkers, and any other assorted readers that don't fit into that category, like me to return to?  Are there any stories you particularly want a fresh installment of?

The wrong emotions - Story Idea

Take a setting where it isn't complete bullshit to represent someone's emotions as individual beings with their own personalities.  Maybe the person is an alien or a supernatural creature or some such.

Since the emotions are distinct things they could conceivably be kidnapped.

Our story begins when the person's emotions have been sucked out except for few negative ones.  Now it's up to Fear, Depression, and Apathy to save the day.

I'm thinking that the story would involve person in whose head emotions are being attacked to suck out the ones the badguy thinks represent a threat, and then her girlfriend is kidnapped for experimentation.

Fear has a leg up because whenever Courage came out to play in the past fear was right there with her.  (You can't have courage without fear.)  That said, Fear is still Fear and so motivation is mostly along the lines of, "Not rescuing [girlfriend] is way more scary than those admittedly scary weapons."

So you get decision making processes that go like this.

Fear: Those energy turrets are really scary... but if we don't go we won't be able to save [girlfriend]; that's terrifying!  We have to go!

Depression: We'll never survive.

Fear: Apathy, do we care if we die?

Apathy: meh.

Fear: Exactly.  Anyway, Depression, if we stay here will things be ok?

Depression: No.  Everything will turn out horribly.

Fear: So it's decided: we go.  Now!  Before it's too late.

-

When the character steered by Fear et al. confronts bad guy it should probably be somewhat disturbing because a character who is driven by sheer terror, and who is "meh" when it comes to the possibility of doing unspeakable things is in a position to end that terror by snuffing out the one causing it and as for how other people might look at character after doing unspeakable things, depression would be convinced that character will be despised by everyone no matter what.

And in the end what I see reigning that back in would be more fear.  Fear of what girlfriend would think, fear of what might be lost by crossing those lines.  Blah.

And then the other aspects of the personality are returned.  Fear gives Courage a big hug.  Depression feels a bit good but maintains that it won't last, and Apathy is "meh."

-

[Original Work Index]

An update (finances and stuff)

Today I'm under the weather.  Feel sick.  I think I picked up what one of the kids had.  He's pretty much better.  Today was the second day he had to stay home from school, but after getting several hours more sleep than he usually does he seems to have bounced back.

I've been meaning to give a bit of an update moneywise for a while, right now, when I don't feel like I should be moving, seems an ideal time.

In addition to reducing my supplement by $200 they determined that they over paid me by more than four thousand.  The good news: the don't want it back all at once (though they're open to the possibility.)

The bad news:they're taking it out of my supplement to the tune of $70.  I don't have the figures in front of me right now, so I son't know how much over $4,000 they think they over paid me (could be closer to $5,000), but $4,000 even would take five years to pay off at that rate.  That't the lower limit.  The upper limit is sa ix years (there was rounding involved.)

I haven't mentioned the $200 a month problem, that's now a $270 dollar a month, because I thought that somebody had saved me from it by setting up a monthly donation to fill the gap.  Something must have gone wrong with it because it only happened once.  At the time the second monthly donation should have come in I was too distracted and stressed about other things to even notice, but looking back I can see that only the first one came in.

Things have actually been kind of ok because I got multiple donations from mid April to May first which managed to fill the hole that had already been created by the reduced payment and the period without food supplement.

In many ways the money that I'm no longer getting is the amount I needed for non-monthly bills.  So I'd save up during the months they weren't due so I could pay them when they were.

So the $200 hole, soon to be adjusted to $270, will be a big problem soon, but it's not stressing my day to day life right now.

Withdrawing from most classes after the first semester from hell means that I wasn't a full time student which means that I have to start making payments my student loan.  I only have one so, as student debt goes, it's not that much: $5,657.40  Minimum payment is between 50 and 60 dollars a month.  I don't remember the interest rate.

I probably have a month or two (including this one) before major disaster looms.

That's basically where things stand.

If I dwell on things it'll probably negatively affect the blog, but if I manage not to things should be ok until the manure hits the turbine.

-

Obviously donations are quite welcome provided that you can spare whatever you send my way, but the primary point of this post is just to have an update on what's going on.  I felt like one was overdue.

Kim Possible -- Forgotten Seeds, Chapter 5: Downtime and what came before

[Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.]

Kim looked around the room. Most people seemed mentally exhausted. Also despondent.

Shego had muttered something about Horatio stealing her style shortly after he started focusing on his fingernails. Surge had collapsed against a wall.

Amy and Drakken were discussing the possibility that an infertility weapon could really wipe out the human race. From what Kim was overhearing, it seemed disturbingly likely. The fact that it was targeted at the “meta-human” population meant that it was designed to affect a wider biological range than seen in the entire rest of the species. That reduced the odds that some people might have a natural immunity.

Henry, Hawk, and Blok were just staring into space.

Letting things go on like this couldn't possibly be good. So Kim did her best to muster a confident commanding tone and said, "Everybody listen up. Getting into Doctor Director's account has given me access to more information so--"

"Your wonder car couldn't hack the system?" Shego asked, but it lacked her usual punch.

"The system is hard-line only, Shego. There was no wireless access to hack," Kim said. Shego merely shrugged. “I'll need to look over the new information to figure out the best way to get us home. The good news is that we have more than enough air for the moment, so we can afford to do this right.

"Until I've had a chance to look at the new intel, you all can do whatever you want. A lot of the compartments we have access to were exposed to vacuum before I rebooted the systems here, so that should have preserved anything. Horatio already found some fruit.

"Take a walk, scrounge a meal, have a nap. I don't care what you do, but do something."

The others slowly left the room. Shego didn't look like she wanted to, but Surge practically pulled her out of the room.

With the others gone Kim could get to the important work of trying to actually save them.

* * *

Shego looked annoyed at being called away, clearly she had some business she wanted to finish with Kim, but there was something that Surge needed to say to her and she'd already waited long enough. It was overdue really.

"I'm sorry," She told Shego.

"For what?" Shego said, apparently impatient and annoyed.

Surge was unsure: did Shego honestly not know, or did she just want to make her spell it out?

"You almost ran out of air," Surge said.

"Could have happened to anyone," Shego said.

"You ran out of air because you talked so much," Surge said. "You talked so much to keep me calm. If I hadn't been panicking you would never have been in danger."

"That's what you're worried about?" Shego asked.

Surge looked away, "You almost died and it was my fault."

Shego laughed. Now Surge was really confused.

"Kid, if you almost kill me, it won't be because you panicked a bit at being stranded on the moon, it won't involved an air supply, and I will be very impressed with you," Shego said.

Surge met Shego's eyes in hopes that they'd give some kind of indication of what she was thinking.

"Personally, I don't think you have it in you to take me out," Shego said, "and if you can come close then I've underestimated you."

Surge couldn't figure out what was going on in Shego's head, and finally decided to settle for one last question, "So you're not..."

"I'm not mad. I'm not angry. I'm not holding a grudge," Shego said. "If it means so much to you, you're forgiven." Shego paused for a moment, Surge tried to use the time to let Shego's words sink in, but they really didn't. "If you keep me from talking to Kimmie much longer, though, then I will be angry."

Surge knew the tone. It was a Shego-threat and Shego-threats were often followed by plasma.

"I-- I'm done."

"Good," Shego said, then she walked out of the room.

* * *

When the others had shambled out Kim thought they looked like zombies, just not as cheerful. Dead eyes, emotionally spent, hopeless.

They'd be worse if she'd told them what she was worried about.

She sped through the files she now had access to, only glancing at them, each time determining that it couldn't help and moving on.

The room's door opened and she didn't even look away. She knew the sound of those barely perceptible footsteps well. Shego had come.

* * *

"It was a nice try, Princess, but if things were as peachy as you made them out to be, you wouldn't need to look for new information," Shego said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kim said. The fact that she didn't even glance away from the computer's screen annoyed Shego more than the lie itself.

"If we take things slow so as not to rattle anything we'd accelerate at one g toward earth for an hour and forty-five minutes," Shego said. "Then we'd turn around and decelerate at one g for another hour and forty-five. That puts us in earth orbit.

"It'd take us around six minutes to sync with the earth's rotation. Then we just drop. At that point there's friction and drag involved, so let's average a mere 150 miles per hour to be extra safe. That means two hours to the surface.

"Five and a half hours, give or take, and the first group is safely on earth. Eleven hours and the incredible wonder car is back here for group two. Sixteen and a half and group two is down. That's probably all we need.

"If you're really worried about being able to pack enough air, we could do three groups of three and use the extra seats for air tanks. Twenty seven and a half hours to get us all back to earth using your car, and your car alone."

Kim mumbled something that might have been, "Whatever."

"So what aren't you telling the others, Kimmie?" Shego asked. "Why do you need to look for more information on that antiquated piece of crap?" she pointed to the computer terminal in disgust.

Kim didn't respond.

Shego spun Kim's chair so that she was looking directly in her eyes and half growled, half shouted, "Answer me!"

* * *

Shego's math could use some work, but she was mostly right. If they were truly safe here then all they'd need to do would be to take a few trips in Jade. If they were.

Kim looked away from Shego.

"Look at me damn it!" Shego shouted. The words hit her like a punch. Worse, really. Kim had been punched a fair amount in her time and it never hurt that much.

When she finally did look at Shego she could feel the first tears sliding down her cheeks. It took her a few tries to speak. When she finally was able to, though, the words flowed out just fine:

"If anyone stays behind they won't live long enough for Jade to get back. Unless I find something in this base to change things, some of us are definitely going to die."

* * *

Kim hadn't slept. Maybe that was it. She'd been through a lot of stressful things of late and maybe that was causing her to give up hope. That'd better be the reason.

Possible had better not be giving up hope simply because the situation was hopeless because, "I'm not going to die up here!"

"You... you don't have to," Kim said. "Jade is made to seat five. If we pack her like the orange line at rush hour we can definitely get one or two extra people in there.

"So all I need--"

"The orange line?" Shego asked.

"I got my doctorate in Boston," Kim said. She turned back to the computer. "If I can just find some more space--"

"The trunk?"

"Has rocket engines in it," Kim said.  "I just need to find a way to make Jade work for eight people. Then everything will be alright."

Kim definitely wasn't thinking straight. "There are nine of us," Shego pointed out.

"I'll stay behind," Kim said. "If I can save the others then maybe it'll make up for my part--"

"No!" Shego wasn't even sure why she was so angry at the idea of Kim staying behind. If someone had to, why not Kim? Kim had killed someone, even if it had been accidental. Kim had captured her. Kim had invented the technology that had kept them all helpless for centuries. And Kim was not allowed to die.

Shego wasn't really sure why, but she definitely wasn't going to let Kim die.

"We're not all going to make it out of this, Shego," Kim said. "And I should be--"

"No. No, you don't get to start with the assumption that someone has to sacrifice themselves just so you can justify your desire to martyr yourself to earn atonement points," Shego said as she walked to an empty chair.

"I don't want to die," Kim said.

Shego picked up the chair and started back to Kim, "You can keep saying that if you want, but you're not acting like it."

She put the chair next to Kim's sat in it, and gestured at the computer, "Show me what's going on."

* * *

Henry, Blok, and Hawk had found what appeared to pass as a kitchen. It had things that, according to the labels at least, were in fact edible. All three of them seemed to have their doubts on that point. Even under the best conditions, the standards to which Global Justice held its field rations were not what most people would consider standards worthy of the name "Food".

Henry was sitting on a counter, pressed back into a space where a cabinet might have been intended to go. He watched as Blok stood near the middle of the room --occasionally changing to his stone form to rip cans open-- and Hawk, now topless, modified his shirt with one of the kitchen knives.

For a long time no one spoke.

Finally Blok turned to Henry and asked, "How'd they get you?"

"I tried to make the world a better place," Henry said. Try to improve things and they slapped you down. He should have stuck to identity theft.

Hawk turned to look at Henry and smiled. "You too?"

"What did you do?" Henry asked him.

Blok had stopped messing with cans and had moved on to a bar of something that, if Henry interpreted the label correctly, claimed to be peach flavored. Block looked like he disagreed with that assessment of the flavor. Regardless, Henry's question to Hawk had obviously caught his attention, because he said, "You're kidding, right?" to Henry before Hawk had a chance to answer.

"I'm not kidding," Henry said.

"I'm interested in why you think I should be a household name," Hawk said. He paused to put on his shirt. "I was always small time." His deep blue wings burst into existence through the holes he had cut in the shirt.

"You were a folk hero," Blok said.

"I specialized in dealing with places where the security overlooked their vulnerability to aerial approaches and getaways," Hawk said while stretching his wings. "Hardly the stuff of legend."

"So you didn't get caught while leading GJ forces on a wild goose chase while a group of Saunders Act refugees under your protection escaped to freedom?"

"They got away?" Hawk asked. Henry could hear the genuine interest in his voice. He understood it. He'd feel a lot better about his own capture if it had done something good for someone.

"They all did," Blok said. "That's about the only thing all of the stories agree on: all of them, however many there were, made it to freedom."

Hawk smiled wide. Then he asked, "Where was freedom? Did they make it to Marcella's--"

"No, not the Free Zone," Blok said.  "Shortly after you were captured a new territory was created: Ashley's Protectorate. Your refugees weren't far from the border so they crossed into it."

Hawk looked, understandably, at a loss. Which meant that Henry would get to tell a story because this he knew about. "It's a great story," Henry said.

"After the Grass Famine of 2019 a lot of people were unhappy with their leadership, but you couldn't exactly opt out," Henry said.

"Any time someone tried to rebel against the federal government or their GJ allies, the rebellion was put down, hard," Blok said.

Hawk shivered. "I remember seeing the video from Charlotte."

Henry did too. That had been when he promised himself that from that moment on he would only ever use text-only news sources.

"So, a lot of people wanted to have someone else in charge, but couldn't risk choosing to change leadership," Henry said. "That's when a first time villain named Ashley came onto the scene. She didn't see the point in code names, didn't want all that much and didn't even have a death ray.

"She threatened Cleveland with a non-lethal ray that simply would have caused discomfort. Before she could say how much --or really how little-- she planned to extort, Cleveland surrendered to her rule."

"As did Akron, Elyria, Youngstown--" Blok said.

“Within fifteen minutes it was the entire I-71 corridor all the way to Louisville," Henry said. "She was still trying to explain that she just wanted money, not to be in charge of anything, when the surrenders spread outward. Pittsburgh to the east, in the west Indianapolis followed by Chicago some 20 minutes later. When Fort Wayne saw her territory on both sides the people figured they should surrender too.

"She ended up with Ohio, Indiana, eastern Illinois, Northern Kentucky, and western Pensylvania."

"And before the territory was even settled," Blok said, "she was getting treaties and trade agreements from various places. Detroit was first to recognize her holdings as a nation--"

"They were always a thorn in Global Justice's side," Henry said.

"Canada threw in their support for reasons that no one really understood," Blok said.

"Japan and Marcella's Free Zone both offered alliances that were quickly accepted," Henry said.

"I'm … confused," Hawk said. "The Midwest just handed over control to someone who didn't even want it?"

"They wanted new leadership, and the prospect of a complete unknown in charge appealed to them more than either the people in Washington or the Global Justice leaders in whatever secret bunker they operated out of," Henry said.

"And they figured that while they could be punished for rebelling, they could hardly be blamed for being conquered," Blok said.

"But wouldn't GJ or the feds just take the land back?" Hawk asked.

"Global Justice was never equipped to wage a full scale war," Henry said. "They were much better at targeted operations dealing with specific individuals. Even then, it was generally assumed that they'd have the cooperation of local authorities."

"Or at least not be arrested on sight for being Global Justice," Blok said.

"The cops were always contrite about it of course," Henry said. "'Sorry, I don't want to throw you in jail, but a supervillain took over the entire area and horrible things will be done to me if I don't.'"

"The videos were so much fun," Blok said.

"Videos?" Hawk asked.

"Ashley didn't have the manpower to defend her, suddenly very large, borders," Henry said. "Part of what she did was simply use the existing law enforcement, move all military assets in her territory to the border, and stuff like that. But right from the start she needed a lot more people.

"Apparently she was uneasy giving weapons, the best evil science could create, to complete strangers. So anyone who did any kind of enforcement or defense for her had to wear a camera while on duty, cameras were also attached to weapons and various other things." Henry paused. "Intentionally turning one of the cameras off was automatically assumed to be to hide a major crime. The result was that--"

"Every time those storm troopers in blue and black got picked up by the police and thrown in jail there was a video of it," Blok said. "Generally from multiple angles."

"From when the camera policy was first implemented to when the Protectorate finally fell, the film of GJ agents getting what they had coming to them was a non-stop internet sensation," Henry said.

"Ok," Hawk said, "but what about the US military? They wouldn't just sit by and do nothing while the heartland defected."

"Ashley was thrust into power without ever wanting it," Henry said, "but she was also really good at managing it. She declared people who were 'different' a protected class, just like any ethnic or religious minority, and as a result people with powers flocked into her borders. She never conscripted anyone, but she was an extremely persuasive speaker and by the time the campaign to retake her territory in the name of the United States really took off she had special forces units equipped with reality bending tech and populated by reality bending people."

"She also said that the Protectorate was a second chance state," Blok said. "She explained it as getting a fresh start the moment you entered, if you wanted it, in exchange for service. Whatever your crimes you had a second chance. Second chance, not third, so you could still blow it."

"Since getting the second chance meant service directly to her government," Henry said, "everyone who took up the offer had the cameras. It worked out surprisingly well, even with the few catastrophic failures.

"Regardless, she had a sizable defense force by the time the military was coming after her, and she also managed to enlist several weather machines in her air-force. The going theory was Canadian assistance."

"Ok, that's the second time you mentioned Canada," Hawk said. Henry nodded. "But they were a GJ country."

"They were, and if they ever pulled out of the alliance GJ would have used their leverage in the US government to invade," Henry said. "No one knows why they risked GJ's wrath, but there are some theories I find compelling."

"What theories?" Blok asked.

"I was gonna say that," Hawk said.

"Ok," Henry said. "They couldn't openly defy Global Justice because of a big long border with GJ's closest ally and charter nation that was the US. But they seemed to enjoy thumbing their nose at GJ whenever possible, it was in large part thanks to their support that Detroit was able to remain largely independent.

"In fact, they were always supporting border regions that resisted Global Justice provided that the regions were on the US side of the border and thus didn't directly look like them rising up against GJ.

"The border regions provided Canada with a buffer zone since any invasion force would first have to fight through unfriendly territory on the US side of the border. Fighting resistance in the US meant that Global Justice's North American resources were tied up and couldn't be used to effectively crack down in Canada. When Canada was unable to shelter it's own citizens targeted by GJ, they could send them to the border regions for relative safety.

"And, finally, whenever they were forced to explain why they were supporting rebellions in a country they were allied with, they seemed to take great joy in detailing human rights abuses GJ committed in the US as justification for supporting the rebellion in question."

"It probably also made them feel good to do the right thing," Blok said.

"Ok, enough Canada," Hawk said, "what happened to the Protectorate?"

"It was a beacon of acceptance, tolerance, and saying, 'Damn the Man!' to the powers that be for about two years," Henry said.

"Then US forces with support from GJ pulled out all the stops and destroyed it in about a week, with another week afterward for mopping up," Blok said.

"Ashley was able to stop the previous efforts because she was consistently underestimated and none of those attempts went all out.  The last one, though... the phrase I heard was that they were 'hit with everything short of nuclear weapons'," Henry said.

"That sucks," Hawk said, the depression in his voice was unmistakable.

"Consider where we are today," Henry said. "No story can have a happy ending. But the end of the Protectorate wasn't all bad. In the chaos that surrounded the fall, all of the Saunders' Refugees disappeared."

"Not Global Justice 'disappeared'," Block said. "They, somehow, got away clean."

"Ashley kept all of the attention focused on her,” Henry said. "It was only after she died in a 'last stand' that GJ realized that she'd been distracting them. By then the Saunders' civilians were gone."

"Well, at least something went well," Hawk said.

"Your people were probably some of them," Blok said, "given how your story spread."

"You know," Henry said, "you never did tell us how a 'small time' criminal ended up sacrificing himself for refugees."

* * *

"Ok," Shego said, "I'm with you on the fact that not leaving on the initial trip means certain death."

In fact, the facility was designed incredibly poorly. There weren't enough resources to make repairs, it wasn't set up so you could write off damaged zones to conserve resources, and the way it kept the atmosphere from escaping the damaged sections was force fields. Force fields. Arguably the stupidest things one could install in the face of a vacuum.

When you repaired something to keep your atmosphere from escaping you wanted the patches to last, not to require a constant expenditure of power.

The power would fail before Kim's car could make a round trip. If they didn't leave as one, people were going to die.

"Which is what I told you, ages ago," Kim said.

Testy, Princess? Shego thought. "But you're still going about this wrong," she said.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Kim said, and Shego decided that she needed to give Kim sarcasm lessons.

"Fitting more people into the car isn't the solution," Shego said. "We need to be looking for a vehicle to take the extra people in."

"And then what?" Kim asked. "Jade can tow whatever you find to earth, but once we get there it's not as easy getting it down. She doesn't have a tow cable that can fight the stresses of gravity and inertia and wind and whatever the hell else we might encounter."

"Did Miss Perfect just swear?" Shego asked, allowing herself to be a bit playful.

Kim simply blushed.

"There might be hope for you yet, Kimberly Ann Possible," Shego said.

"Middle name?" Kim asked. "I must have done something really bad."

"Worse than bad," Shego said, "you showed potential."

The conversation lapsed into silence.

Shego broke it by asking, "Are you ready to give my idea a chance?"

* * *

"Is the information you get specific or general?" Surge asked Horiatio. "You know, when you look at the past."

Horatio ignored her.

He was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, and staring off into space.

"I want to know about my girlfriend. Her name was Jana." Horatio closed his eyes.

"Did she live a good life? How did she die?"

Horatio sighed. "I'm spent. I'm useless now."

She wanted to be angry, but the way he said it almost made it seem like he'd actually said the word, "Sorry." She leaned on the wall next to him and slowly lowered herself to the floor at his side.

She had nothing to do. Nowhere to be. She had no one now. She wasn't even sure if she cared if she lived now.

* * *

Her hand touched his. Horatio held it. She was warm.

People overrated warmth. Cold blooded species were perfectly nice. Dinosaurs had merely been luke-warm blood. Still, warmth was something he could relate to. It made her more real. She had been warm when she'd helped him walk.

Not incessant chatter, just a simple feeling of warmth.

She'd helped him. She'd trusted him.

He tightened his grip on her hand and followed her back.

Wandering, Shego, the group meeting, it would take forever at this pace.

The trip to the base flew by, Surge was back in her cryobed. Nothing.

Nothing.

The cryobeds started to disappear from the room as the prison population dwindled. Horatio didn't look at them, he didn't want to know. Dead people he had no desire to see alive.

Movement. The world moved around him as Surge's cro-bed was transported. Into a lander, up to orbit, back to earth. All in a flurry.

He slowed down. A secret launch facility run out of Vandenberg. Various shipments to get her there without being tracked. A Global Justice facility. She was out of the cryobed, sedated though.

More movement, she was in a mall. She was standing.

“Damn,” Horatio said to himself. She hadn't been breaking any laws, she'd been shopping. The GJ goons had knocked her out with one of their damned electroshock watches without even noticing that she was one of the innocent victims of the situation they'd been sent in to stop. Then they just shipped her off to the moon without ever letting her regain consciousness to tell her side of the story.

He followed her back. A few hours earlier she was in a small apartment with another young woman.

Nothing to indicate a name though.

Further back.

A phone call. The other one on the phone, but at the beginning of the call, Surge handed the phone to her. Perfect. He let time play out at a usual pace.

"Jana, it's for you," Surge said. The other woman walked in from a different room, took the phone, and thanked Surge.

Bingo.

He zeroed in on the exact moment that the phone was handed over, when Surge was closest to Jana. Then he did what he knew he should never do without his equipment. He did something that was incredibly stupid. He switched anchors, and thus switched time-streams.

A jarring sensation, like if you caught your arm on something while running and it swung your whole body around.

Pain, but considering how these things went ...

Not bad. It was the trip back where things really hurt.

No one could see him. No one could hear him. Look, but no touching. Still he spoke: “Jana, show me how you lived.”

For a time everything was normal. Just a daily routine. Then a growing unease. “Where are you Sarah?” Sarah, that was Surge's name. Shego had used it while they were on their trek.

Pacing. Phone calls. All to voice mail. Restless sleep. Nothing the next day. Reporting the disappearance to the police. The lack of evidence that Surge-- Sarah had gone missing against her will caused there to be no case opened. Jana was told to come back later.

Jana started to ask around on her own. She found out that Sarah had been at the mall. She tracked down witnesses, finally people who remembered seeing Sarah. It took her weeks but she found people who had been in the same room as Sarah when GJ took her.

Now she knew what happened. She went to the police again. The person working the desk that day was sympathetic. A case was opened.

Nothing came of it. Eventually the officer came to Jana off duty and off the record and told her that Global Justice was stonewalling. There was nothing the local police could do, and pressure was being put on them to misfile all records of the case so that no one would connect them to the disappearance.

Internet chats. Human rights groups.

Talking to a member of The Mothers of the National Mall, a human rights advocacy group made up of mothers of people who had been disappeared. “She's an orphan,” Jana had said when asked where Sarah's parents were.

Freedom of Information Act requests.

A gathering of about ten people in Jana's home town.

The Grass Famine. Pain. Loneliness.

Jana turned her laughable human rights group into something to help people through the famine. And every chance she had, she told people about her beloved Sarah who had been obeying the law and trying to make a meager life for herself before she had been abducted without cause.

People who had no interest in the disappearances learned about the true love of the woman who gave them food.

When the famine was over Jana's group was three hundred people strong and in partnership with other like minded groups around the country and around the world.

Political hell broke lose. Riots.

Barely back to normal after the Grass Famine, the truth about Kim Possible threatened to tip the world into anarchy. During the famine, after the famine, right up until the news came out, people all over the world were remembering the days of heroes. They were remembering that Kim Possible had stopped the super grass and thinking that if she were still alive, maybe the recent catastrophe would have been averted. Then they learned that she was still alive, just held in a secret prison on the moon.

The fact that she had never been given a trial just added fuel to the fire.

For Jana the news meant something else, something more personal. She knew where Sarah was. She talked to the moon. She prayed at the moon. She said, "I love you," to the moon every day. Sarah was somewhere up there.

A giant march, maybe a million people. The streets of New York City, at least the ones near the UN building, were covered in people. Commuters had abandoned their cars. Protesters stood on top of the cars as they demanded that their friends, family, and loved ones be returned. "Habeas corpus!" was one of a thousand things chanted.

They were ordered to disperse. Police and GJ agents said the gathering was unlawful.

Protesters held their hands together, daring the other side to cuff them. A chant arose and soon the protesters, maybe million strong, chanted as one, "Fly me to the moon." again and again.

Tear gas. Shorts fired. Blood in the street.

Running in all directions. Dragging the wounded so they wouldn't stay in the line of fire.

Bodies in the streets. Running from hiding place to hiding place, looking for a way to get free.

A cross country trip to get back home.

Telling people there what had happened. Some members leaving because they were afraid of what might be done to them. Others vowing to fight for what was right even more fiercely.

Being worn down over years.

Hope. The Saunders' act was repealed.

Despair. The person who led the repeal and oversaw it happening wasn't the Vice President but an impostor.

Years passed.

War. War with everyone.

Leaving home. Setting out to find some place to live, her followers behind her.

Finding Marcella's Free Zone and being welcomed with open arms. People who gave all that they had in spite of not having enough for themselves.

Years passed.

Old age caught up to her. When she was sure she was dying, Jana demanded to sleep outside. Each time she went to sleep she found the moon in the sky, and said, "Sarah, I love you."

One day she didn't wake up.

A funeral. Well attended. People sharing things Horiatio had seen and not even paid attention to. Lives that Jana improved, all shared in her memory.

Horatio had seen enough. He started to go back whence he came.

The first leg of the journey was simple. He went to where Sarah gave Jana the phone in a flash.  Then the change over.  It felt like he was hit by a semi-trailer at that point. It always hurt more coming back. Now he was with Sarah again. It was easy to follow her back to the present.

* * *

Horatio seemed to suddenly crumple. It wasn't easy for him to have that appearance given that he'd already been sitting in a pretty compact shape.

Looking at him Surge could almost feel the pain that had suddenly come over him, apparently from nowhere.

"She never stopped loving you, Sarah," he said.

She couldn't remember how to make words, she just said, "Whu?"

"She never stopped loving you; she never stopped trying to get you back. The world was better for it. She lived to a ripe old age and died of kidney failure. She died surrounded by people she'd helped."

"I-- I thought you said you couldn't-- I don't-- Thank you." She was grateful, even if she didn't know how to feel about what he'd said.

"I shouldn't have," Horatio said.

"I-- I'm sorry," Surge said. "I put you through that and I don't even know how I feel about the answer."

"Everybody dies," Horatio said. "She lived well. Maybe that counts for something."

* * *

"We're not going to randomly find some magical way to get back to--" Kim stopped right there. She should have said this was pointless ages ago because apparently the universe wanted to prove her wrong. "This looks interesting."

"What?" Shego asked.

"When you say you can fly anything...?"

Shego leaned in toward the monitor. "Oh, I can work with this."

* * *

Sarah had left to find something to eat. Horatio stared at his left hand, he was trying to hold it steady.

Good so far. A twitch. A flinch.

A shudder. A spasm the length of his arm. Shudder, shudder, spasm, twitch, flinch, twitch, spasm.

This was not good.

"I'm guessing it's not supposed to do that," Possible said. He hadn't even noticed her entering the hall.

How do you respond to that? No, it's totally supposed to move when I tell it to be still.

If you'd used your battle suit so much that you came to rely on it, do you think maybe you'd be unprepared for working without it and end up doing things you shouldn't, overtax your body, and screw yourself over in your musculature?

It's just my cells becoming unstuck in time which will likely kill me if not treated.

"It's not supposed to do that," Horatio said.

"We have a plan," Possible said. "Come to the room we met in before in 15 minutes or so."

Horatio nodded.

-

[Previous][Kim Possible Index][Next]

Skewed Slightly to the Left: The frightened doctor

[Originally posted at Slacktivist, though this post is the one that actually covers the relevant passage.]
[In canon the doctor is bored, in spite of the excessive need for him outside on the tarmac.  I thought he could use a different motivation for not helping those outside.]

Cameron felt a tap on the shoulder and turned to see a man in his twenties or so who looked shaken and nervous. "Your wound needs to be dressed. I'm a doctor."

"I'm ok," Cameron said. "A lot of people have it worse."

"I-- I know," the doctor said with shame in his voice. "I should be outside helping but when I saw," it looked to Cameron like he swallowed to keep from vomiting. "I can't be out there. I tried. I-- I tried to to do the right thing, but I ended up running away and hiding.

"I just can't face the scene out there. But dressing your head wound, that's something I can do," he sighed. "Please. Please let me do something to help someone."

Cameron looked at the man for a moment.

"It won't make up for not being out there where I'm most needed," the doctor said, looking at the ground, "But at least I won't be completely useless if I can keep you from getting an infection."

Cameron thought about it. "Ok," he said.

"I had my bag with me, but I gave it to someone who could face what was going on out there."

"Good thinking," Cameron said.

"So if you'll come with me to the drinking fountain, we can clean the wound, then we'll have to look for whiskey, grain alcohol, or honey to get it disinfected."

"Honey?" Cameron asked. He'd heard about alcohol of sufficiently high proof, but never honey.

"It works wonders, but it's a sticky mess," the doctor said. "Fountain's this way."

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]