The Quantum Connection

What do you mean, Steven? Mike asked.

Could you take over my body and take him? 

YES! 

DO IT, MIKE! 

Then it was a whirlwind even faster than I had been experiencing before. I was zigging and zagging and looping and diving and slamming faster than my mind could grasp. Once I noticed that Mike had pushed Anson and Jim to the ground. Jim grounded on the little Gray ship and toppled it over with Prawmitoos inside it. I think Mike did that on purpose.

Then he dropped below Opolawn and dodged his barrages. Interestingly enough, with each barrage of fire that Opolawn made it forced Jim and Anson to leap and dodge and move closer together with respect to each other. I was moving so fast and the stress was so great that occasionally I thought I heard tears and cracks in my body— but I was feeling no pain. The nanomachines may have been working. I wasn't sure if Mike was using all of his computational powers to fight Opolawn or not. But Mike kept pushing and pushing and pushing. He taunted Opolawn into following him to extreme altitude and then he turned back planetward. We zipped past each other head to head at near light speed. Had we collided I'm not sure the little warp field generator on my belt could've taken the stress. Fortunately, Mike swerved at the last nanosecond.

Opolawn stopped and reversed course in pursuit of us and he fired off more of his lightning bolts. A blinding barrage of Opolawn's fire flung Jim and Anson skipping back across the landing field and through the hangar doors of the temple. Mike dropped below Opolawn at maximum velocity and I thought I could feel my right hand going through my rear zip pocket, but it all happened in a matter of microseconds so I wasn't too sure about it. Mike dropped me continuously for a full two hundred milliseconds, several tens of kilometers below Opolawn, and shut off the warp field at about five hundred milliseconds before impacting the ground. If I hit the ground—or air—at that velocity I would have been turned to dust, but we were still in space so there was no atmosphere for me to slam into or breathe. But the warp field was only off a microsecond or less.

Then the freckle-faced soldier Gray's credit card that I had kept all this time turned on and the blue-white light flowed from it as if in slow motion. Mike hit the warp bubble again and I was holding the credit card above my head with the warp field and the beam of light formed as Mike stopped me cold on the surface of the planet just outside the hangar on the bank of the river. A ring of dust and debris was thrown up around me as the blue-white light flowed upward from the credit card and into Opolawn's trajectory. Opolawn was moving way too fast to stop and he flew right into the Gray confinement singularity beam. I stood in an Okinawan Karate Cat stance with my hands above my head, holding the confinement beam with my warp armor's field, and the blue-white light of the Gray confinement singularity surrounded Opolawn and then began to collapse. The blue-white ball of light rapidly vanished and then was gone. Opolawn was now trapped inside the forever-contracting singularity. How long would his warp field hold out—three or four millennia? Who knew, but if he didn't have a SuperAgent in there with him and if he didn't know how to use it he was doomed to be squished when his systems could no longer handle the crushing stress. Eventually, all parts would give out and Opolawn would die!

Mike let me rest for a second or two while he put the nanomachines to work on me. I still stood in the odd fighting pose at the edge of the river's bank. Then Mike gave my body back to me.

It's all yours, Steven. We beat him. 

Mike, that sure was a lot like a memory of mine. 

Yes, indeed, Steven. It was your memory and it was a great strategy. 

Did you read my mind? 

You said I could take over your body. Should I not have? 

You did right, Mike. Let's get out of here. 

Steven? 

Yes, Mike, what is it? 

Just one more thing . . . JACKIEZZ WINS!!! The image of little JackieZZ's overemphasized female video likeness flooded my mind.

'Thank you, JackieZZ, wherever you are!' I said.

Uh, Steven? 

Yes, Mike? 

We've got company so we'd better go. 

Right, Mike. I rolled over Superman style and flew to the hangar. I rolled over on my back and could see more of the fighters converging on our position. I swooped down and caught Anson and Jim in my warp bubble while Mike shook hands and negotiated with the SuperAgent on the hangar's construction computer. As we started to shrink out and just before the warp bubble went opaque I caught a glimpse of Prawmitoos running into the hangar with the replica Himbroozya controller in his hand and then the bubble went black and we slipped through the quantum connection of the SuperAgent in the Lumpeya City hangar bay.

We immediately appeared inside the supply room just outside of Michelle in the Phoenix. I turned the warp bubble off and scanned the room. Jim and Anson were drenched in sweat and I was sure I looked the same. The three of us were exhausted.

'Did you fellows catch ol' Prawmitoos running after us just as we left?' I asked them.

'I saw him running across the field toward us just before you picked us up. Why?'

'Well, uh . . . he had the thing that goes Big Bang in his hands,' I said.

'Then by all means, son, don't disappoint the little bastard. Go ahead and detonate it,' Anson said with a huge—as he would put it—shit eatin' grin on his face.

'Should I? You wouldn't think any less of me would ya?' I laughed. 'Mike, can you hear me?'

'Yes, Steven,' Mike's voice came through the supply room speakers.