Final Confrontation, Part 2

Final Confrontation. Part 2

This chapter takes place during Episode 13.
Author's note: There are anomalies in the cartoon that this fanfic will attempt to explain. I'm not sure if I got the timeline down right.
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"HE DID WHAT??"

The pilot of the police chopper winced on his side of the connection, "He ordered us off, Mayor!" the pilot explained, "His companion looked like one of those green goons, but sure didn't act like one. That is, until he picked us up by the scruff of our necks to force us to follow Dr. Zacharias' orders. He stayed with him, though, so the Doctor's got plenty of muscle to help him."

"Well, he must have found something!" the mayor replied, still irritated, "Joe, at the lighthouse, has noticed that there's nobody on it right now. Either they jumped off or somehow got inside!"

"Do you have any details on what that thing is like?" Inez asked.

"It's built like an inner-tube inflated with air, with the center hole filled with a large brain suspended at the bottom of a plug of jelly. That glowing ball is suspended in the jelly, dead center above the brain. It might be the control module. Or it might be a bomb. We couldn't tell. Grimes found a tall chamber of some sort on the leading edge and marked where it came closest to the surface, about 15 meters down. That's when Dr. Zack ordered us off."

"How much of the monster is underwater??" Inez asked.

"Not much. Its design makes it ride pretty high on the water."

"Damn!" she cursed, "I was hoping that it went down so deep, it would go aground far offshore! We've been tracking it, and we can tell its following the dredged shipping channel. If its as shallow as you say, it'll crawl onto land at the dock area without any trouble!"
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The hole vanished the moment Dr. Zack's attention was diverted by Mel's huge hands catching him and letting him down to the floor.

The room was pitch black. Dr. Zack heard Mel rummaging around in the bag. He took the opportunity to shrug off the air tanks that he now didn't need any more. The light of a flashlight Illuminated the room, "Here. Take this one." Mel said, handing it to Dr. Zack after using it to find another flashlight.

They surveyed the room. It was about 10 meters wide and deep, and about 5 meters high.

"Do you smell it?" Mel asked when they got back together to compare observations.

"Yes, but I can't place it." Dr. Zack replied, trying to recognize the barely tangible, burnt odor.

"It smells like a creation just pulled from the tank and left to dry out." Mel said.

"Sustenance." Dr. Zack nodded, "This room was a sustenance storage chamber." he flicked his flashlight to a corner, "That makes sense given those holes in the floor to let it drain out. But how do we get out?"

"Well, we can use that trick of yours that got us in here." Mel suggested.

Dr. Zack shook his head, "I can do it only three times a day if I'm making holes big enough for us to pass through. And that's if I eat candy bars to restore my blood sugar levels. I can do it one more time accurately, but the third time is going to be rather inaccurate."

"Have you tried it a fourth time?" Mel asked.

"Yes," Dr. Zack said, chagrined, "I have no idea how far down the other end was, but the hole was small, so not much magma shot out."

"Oh." Mel blinked, "Well then, we shall have to be inventive, won't we?"

He walked around, hitting the walls with his fist, "Here. This wall doesn't have flesh pressing against it."

"Ah!" Dr. Zack's flashlight illuminated a curved weld, "This was the access manway, now welded shut."

"Um hmm." Mel nodded, "But it might be a tank with sustenance on the other side."

Dr. Zack grinned, "Luckily, my submolecular vision can penetrate up to a yard through anything, and hardly takes any energy at all."

Mel grinned back, "X Ray vision, like Superman?"

"No, but I'll be able to tell what's filling the space on the other side." Dr. Zack gazed at the foot of the wall for a half minute, "It's air on the other side." He looked at the wall speculatively.

"Too bad we don't have explosives." Mel remarked.

"Yes. We forgot that too. You know, that weld looks like it was made in a hurry. It may be brittle and break easily."

Mel motioned Dr. Zack aside, stepped back, ran at the wall, leaped, and rammed his heels against the weld, spinning and landing on his feet at the recoil. There was a loud snapping sound in addition to the loud BONG as the steel chamber resonated with the blow. A crack several centimeters long appeared, "On the money, Doctor!" Mel grinned.

"What?"

"You were right!"

"I can't hear you! My ears are ringing!"
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After five minutes of leaping and kicking at the badly welded access manway, enough cracks developed for Mel to force it open wide enough to let both of them through. They stepped out onto a fire escape. "This looks like the main access stairwell." Dr. Zack speculated, "Clever, adapting a fire escape stairway like that."

"What is THAT for?" Mel pointed to a large pipe rising up from the corner. Two smaller pipes came out of the large pipe every half meter, turned, and went in (and presumably through) the wall into the creation on the other side. The large pipe stopped just short of the ceiling.

"I don't know. Let's start looking for clues on how this thing ticks."

They went down the stairs, passing several levels with no doors, but which did have obvious signs of access manways welded shut. Dr. Zack paused to check the contents of each, but they all had air. Each level also had that large pipe that went from floor to ceiling, with the smaller pipes coming from it and going through the wall every half meter.

They finally reached the bottom of the stairwell. The sealed room in this level had a meter and a half of sustenance in it. In addition, the large pipe that they had been noting in the upper levels actually came out from within the room, ran along the floor, turned at the wall, and went up through the ceiling.

Dr. Zack felt at the pipe that came out of the room. Perking up, he then got down and pressed his ear against it, "It's vibrating slightly. Probably from a pump in there."

Mel snapped his fingers, "This creation could not possibly get enough food to eat, not with it being so big that it would scare everything away before it got into reach! It's living off of sustenance!"

Dr. Zack got up, "You're right! Cybersix told me how Von Richter grew his creations. He doesn't have a tank big enough to grow this creation, so he had to grow it in the ocean and try to feed it sustenance internally rather than externally! This structure must serve a function similar to a chick's yolk sac, which feeds it while it is still growing in the shell. It makes sense that Von Richter's largest creatures are oceanic. There's this creature, and that giant mollusk that Julian told me about. No-" he paused, "There's the Eye."

Mel shook his head "Actually, the eye started out smaller than a soccer ball. I heard that Von Richter went into a panic when it started growing larger than he intended from mental energy."

Dr. Zack's eyes followed the path of the large pipe, "Makes sense. Put in several levels of tanks, with pipes feeding the contents to the bottommost one, which probably contains a submersible, high pressure, high capacity pump. That arrangement makes the most of gravity to help feed the pumps. The pipes coming out of the main one at all the different levels forms a sort of distribution network." He motioned above him, "The control room may be the one above this one."

They ran up the steps. Dr. Zack covered his ears as Mel kicked and pounded at the welds, but to no avail, "No good!" Mel said, shaking and wiping sweat from his forehead, "Must have been a more careful techno who welded this one!"

They thought for a few minutes, "Looks to me we'll have to use your talent to get in, Doctor!" Mel sighed.

"No, wait a minute." Dr. Zack pulled his gloves out of his overalls, put them on, then pulled the ski mask over his head. He put his hands flat against the wall on top of the weld, "Wave suit on. gloves 100%" The gloves turned from white, to grey, to black.

After a few seconds, he said, "Gloves off." They turned back to white almost immediately, "Try it now." he said, removing his hands, "Kick where I had my hands."

Mel looked doubtful, but stepped back, ran at the door, leaped, and kicked at the spot. A loud CRACK and flying bits of metal announced the appearance of a wide crack in the weld, "What the-" Mel blinked.

Dr. Zack repeated the process, "I'm using my wave suit to absorb the molecular motion, or heat, from the iron, reducing the temperature and making it more brittle. I've got to be careful, for I can easily freeze my hands if I do it for too long."

After about 10 minutes, a network of cracks had formed, and the wall was dented enough to look inside. Mel put his eye up to the larger crack, "You're right! I see the lights of a control panel inside!"

It took another 20 minutes, but soon they had chipped and cracked enough of the weld of the sealed access manway for Mel to shove the slab open enough for them to get into the control room. Dr. Zack went to the control panel while Mel looked for the light switch.

A single 40 watt bulb lit up the room, "We've got lights now." Mel said, joining Dr. Zack at the control panel.

"Let's not touch anything at first," Dr. Zack said, "We may set it off accidentally. What we want to do is either deactivate it or turn it back out to sea."

They both examined the labels on the gauges, indicators, and lights. There was a monitor embedded in the panel. "Well, there's little danger of activating anything, since I don't see any buttons or switches, just that dial." Mel observed, "Apparently, this was just a monitoring panel. Do you?"

"I don't either." Dr. Zack said, disappointed. He turned to Mel, "Any ideas you can get from-hey!"

"What?" Mel turned to follow Dr. Zack's gaze.

But Dr. Zack was already digging through the trashcan that was sitting next to the control panel, "Just what I thought! Blueprints for this structure. This was the construction headquarters, and they used the panel to confirm correct construction! They probably kept the place neat to avoid accidents, but forgot to empty the trash before sealing everything up! What luck!" He glanced through the blueprints, then glanced at the dial, "Turn that dial to 1."

Mel did so, and the monitor came alive. However, the view was that of a camera lens covered with yellow glue.

"Turn it to 3 now."

Mel did so, and the view turned to the glowing red ball suspended in jelly, "What is this thing?" he asked.

"Monitoring cameras. Von Richter probably used them to monitor construction, and the growth process. Camera 1 seems to be placed in an area that eventually got overgrown by the creature. Hmm." he continued looking through the blueprints, "Okay, turn it to, uhh, number 8".

The view that appeared was of a large cavern that curved away in the distance. Gossamer threads seemed to fill the space, "Look!" Mel pointed on the monitor to a pipe that stuck out of the wall, and which ended in a nozzle. After a few seconds, a small puff of green gas came out of the nozzle and dispersed quickly.

"Okay, that helps make this note on this blueprint make sense." Dr. Zack said, "Apparently, the pipes are used to spray sustenance into the open volume, where it disperses. Those threads are really nerves, and they absorb the sustenance and carry it to the rest of the creature."

Mel frowned, "Umm, wouldn't the sustenance concentration be too low if it's in a gaseous form?"

"Wait a minute. That dial over there. No, the second one from the top with the letters 'CONCx0.001' on the label above it. That seems to lead to a sensor that's in the airspace. That must measure the sustenance concentration in the airspace."

"It's reading 0.1 right now." Mel read, "So if you multipy by 0.001 percent, it must be 0.0001 percent now. It should go boom now."

"Hmm. Obviously, the electrical activity of the nerves is keeping the sustenance excitated, although I don't know how much of a voltage potential is required to do that with that low of a concentration." Dr. Zack thought for a moment, "At 0.0001 percent concentration, the volume of the airspace is so large, I would imagine that the sustenance in it would set off a respectable explosion, even if that red ball in the center isn't a bomb."

Mel switched the monitor back to view 3 and looked at the glowering sphere, "You know, even if it was chock full of TNT, that sphere couldn't possibly do much damage, since it's embedded in jelly. Being close to the center of this creature, one would think that most of the blast would be directed upwards and downwards, not outwards. And even then, the huge mass of the tube holding the airspace, and the airspace itself, would buffer any explosion that would be directed outwards." Mel scratched his head, "It would seem to me that Von Richter badly designed this creature if he wanted it to destroy an entire city. Maybe it won't do much damage."

"Hmm." Dr. Zack shook his head, "I sorta doubt that." he said.

"Doctor, he's good at biology, not weapons." Mel pointed out.

"You have a point," Dr. Zack conceded. He picked up the blueprints and looked at them. He glanced at the blueprint for the bottom-most level and noted the specifications for the pumps in that room, "Yes, they're high capacity, high volume, variable speed pumps down there." He muttered, "They could have emptied this entire structure in less than five minutes. A smaller pump could have been used to keep this thing alive."

"He's not a civil engineer either." Mel added, "I say this thing is going to be a dud, so let's use your talent to get out of here and put some distance between us and it."

Suddenly, Dr. Zack paled, "Wait a minute. The force of that explosion IS going to go upwards and downwards. Isn't the brain below the sphere?"

"Yes."

"So the brain will be destroyed! That would kill the electrical activity and set the sustenance off!"

"You're right! So how big of a boom would THAT make?" Mel asked, "How powerful IS sustenance?"

"Gram for gram, its 80 times more powerful than TNT. It's about twice as dense as water, so-" he pulled out his Palm, "That's about 160 grams of TNT equivalent per CC of sustenance. A thousand CCs makes a liter. A thousand grams makes a kilo, and there's 2.2 pounds per kilo, so-" he punched at the Palm, "That makes about 352 pounds of TNT per liter."

"Well, the concentration in the air out there is so low, there can't be more than two or three thousand liters out there, don't you think? That's over a million pounds of TNT!" Mel looked worried, "That would take out several city blocks for sure!"

"Uh oh."

"What?"

"We forgot about the sustenance downstairs! There's still a meter and a half of it! That high speed pump can empty that room out and put it into the airspace in less than a minute! This room is about 10 by 10 meters, right?"

"Right. So how much TNT is that like?"

Dr. Zack punched at the Palm, looked at the number, scowled, and muttered, "That can't be right. I must have made a mistake. I'll try again."

Mel shifted nervously as Dr. Zack took several minutes calculating and recalculating the number. He finally sighed, "About 26 kits. THAT is BAD news!."

"Kits?"

"Sorry. During my stint at the Energy Research Lab, I talked a lot with some Nuclear Physicists who had worked on nuclear weapons projects. They used a code lingo of Kits and Mets. A Kit is a kiloton of TNT, and a Met is a Megaton of TNT. 26 kits means 26 kilotons of TNT."

"Is that a lot?"

"The first Atomic bomb was about 21 kilotons. It incinerated 10 square kilometers of Hiroshima and killed over 100,000 people," Dr. Zack sighed, "When Von Richter said it would destroy Meridiana, he wasn't that far off!"

"Well, I guess he DOES know something about explosives!" Mel said, chagrined, "So what do we do?"

"Stop it somehow! When did they say they thought it would hit land?"

"Umm. about 11:15, I thought."

Dr. Zack glanced at his watch, "It's about 11:10 now. We don't have much time!" He bit his lip, and glanced at the panel, "Hey! Didn't a light change on the panel?"

Mel glanced at it, "I can't tell."

"Run downstairs and check to see if the pump has started!"

"Okay!" Mel ran out of the room, jumped down the stairs, ran to the pipe, and put his ear up to it, "I don't think so! Must be something else!" he thought, hearing nothing. He turned and ran back upstairs.

However, the moment he got near the opening they had made, he felt cold air and a strong horizontal pull that jerked him off his feet. Suddenly, he felt himself falling, the glowing red sphere of the Isle of Doom off to one side.

He hit the jelly-like dome and bounced about 10 meters into the air. The lights of Meridiana circled around him as he spun around helplessly. When he hit again, he didn't bounce as high, but began to roll down the slope. When he got to the flat part of the Isle of Doom, he was rolling too fast to stop, so kept on rolling until he rolled off the edge. He barely got out a yelled, "DR ZACK!!!!" before he hit open water between the huge tentacles of the Isle feet first. He shot through the shallow water and stopped when he hit bottom, embedding his legs up to his knees.

He tried to pull them out of the muck, but years of dumping bilge water and motor oil had turned the bottom into the consistency of tar.

"I'll have to think of something else!"
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"Hey Captain!" A coast guard sailor on the tug tracking the Isle of Doom yelled, "Did you hear somebody yell for Dr. Zacharias?"

"Yes!" the captain nodded, "It may be that penetration team the mayor's office briefed us about! I'm going in close for a pick up!"

"Be careful!"

"I know! That fishing trawler crew reported on how unpredictable that thing is!"

"This is crazy!" The sailor manning the lights muttered to his companion as he swept the searchlight over the waters, "We're getting closer to that thing?"

"Not half as crazy as those idiots standing on the pier just watching it!"

"We're getting awfully close to-"

"WATCH OUT!"

The giant wave swept over them.
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"Sorry Mel." Dr. Zack apologized to the airspace that the Fixed Idea used to occupy as he collapsed the hole he had created, "But Cybersix will strangle me if I let you get killed!"

He ran downstairs and lay down on his stomach on the ground facing the wall.

This was going to be a day of firsts. He had never tried jumping through a hole before, nor had twisted the orientation of the other end of the hole that pulled Mel through it. THAT effect had interesting implications that had to be checked against the General Theory of Relativity, but that would have to wait for another day, after he got over his headache and survived this little adventure.

NOW he was going to try to form a hole on the other side of a wall, blind, and put the other end about 200 kilometers straight up.

He stared, concentrating.

He was rewarded by the sound of a roar on the other end of the wall, "Gotta keep it open until I'm sure all the sustenance on the other side is vaccumed out into space:" he thought.

Suddenly, the floor jerked wildly, breaking his concentration and dissolving the hole,"Oh no! It must have gotten to land!"

He considered his options. He would have to open the hole again to drain the sustenance completely, and hopefully to suck the fluid already in the pipes out too. He could probably do that a fourth time. However, he very much doubted he could do it a fifth time, much less doing it accurately enough to get out safely.
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"Lucas. I came here to thank you."

"For what?"

"For everything."

Lucas' large fingers touching and gently lifting her chin made her heart beat wildly. When he came close, she pulled away slightly, "But-I'm not human, Lucas!"

"Shhhhh!"

She had never been kissed. Lucas was the first one, and the love and affirmation that flowed from him to her made her almost dizzy. The temptation crossed her mind to abandon the city to the monster out in the harbor, to take Lucas and Data 7, and to flee with them, so that there could be more moments like this eternal one....

"Oh, that would be so wonderful..." she thought, giddy with happiness for the second time in her life.

The tears that welled up and ran down her cheek forced her decision.

She tore herself away from Lucas and fled out the window, knowing that lingering to savor just a few seconds more would overrule her better judgment.

"Goodbye Lucas."
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Dr. Zacharias slowly pulled himself into a sitting position and leaned back against the now sloping steel wall, nursing a tremendous headache.

He had been able to open another hole, and kept it open until the vaccuum inside the tanks had sucked the sustenance and air out of it, making the outside air pressure shove the walls inward. He hoped he had gotten rid of enough sustenance. However, he was quite sure he wouldn't be able to open another hole to excape. He'd have to figure out another way to survive.

But first, he'd have to let this raging headache subside a little, "I'll just rest for a few minutes." he thought.
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The sudden jerk that announced a change in direction awoke him, "I wonder what caused that?" Dr. Zack thought. The short nap had helped the headache subside enough for him to think up a plan. He slowly made his way back to the top level to retrieve the air tank he had left there. Before he wrestled it on, he pulled off his overalls and the outer wavesuit top, removing the photo and putting it under the inner wavesuit top. He then turned the air on, put on the tank with some difficulty, then managed to stretch the wavesuit top over it as he put it back down. He jerked and pulled at the pants and top so that there was as perfect a seal between them as he could manage. Things were complicated when the floor shifted at an angle, as if it was climbing a mountain, "Must have plowed through the city and it's climbing the mountain on the other side to get altitude. That would simulate an air blast. The mountain would redirect the force so that everything would be blown out to sea." He then slowly made his way back downstairs to the control room, trying to keep his balance.

Half way there, he heard the loud whine of machinery starting up. He smiled a few moments later at the loud explosion, accompanied by the sound of large metal pieces flying about inside the metal room, "I must have done a good enough job if the pumps cavitated and blew up. Any sustenance left in the pipes won't be dispersed and contribute to any explosion."

"Ninety Seconds" a voice sounded out of a speaker as he entered the control room. He switched the monitor to camera three and pulled his gloves on while looking at it, "It must be close to exploding, since its blinking. Nice of Von Richter to let me know when its going to blow up." He glanced at the sustenance air concentration dial, and noted that it was almost zero, "Good! All this extra moving about must have burned up most of the remaining sustenance in the air chamber! There's certain to be some left, maybe 150 tons worth. I MIGHT be able to ride that out."

He pulled the photo out and looked at it. It was of him and a very petite woman with long brown hair, taken at an ERL Invitational Colloquium. He was smiling a little, but her grin and her arm around his back indicated that she was enjoying the photo opportunity much more than he was. Her onyx black eyes sparkled with amusement at his discomfort. "Hmm. It was the eyes too, on top of how small-boned she is, that made her remind me of you, Lauren." he thought with sad, regretful amusement, "I guess I hardly ever look at this photo any more to have figured that out earlier. Another example of old Tony missing out on the more important cues of his so-called life."

The rumbling of the Isle of Doom came to a stop, diverting him from the blue thoughts that old men think when they think about missing an opportunity of a lifetime. He noted that the sustenance air concentration dial read a hair above zero, "Out of gas, buddy. Hopefully, you never got to where Von Richter wanted you to be."

He quickly put the photo away, put the regulator into his mouth, then pulled the outer ski mask over his face. The inner one went over the opening, protecting his eyes. He'd have to cover his eyes with his hands as well.

There was a chance for survival, but it was rather slim: The slightest gap in wavesuit coverage would allow hot gasses to enter and incinerate him.
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Von Richter screamed as his creations surrounded him. Hands, claws, and tentacles reached out to take hold of his arms and legs...
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"Wave suit on."
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"NOOO!" Cybersix thought when she threw the exit door open to see the Isle of Doom to her right, and the forest, where it should have been, to her left, "Von Richter didn't do it!"

She turned and leaped blindly, only to encounter Data 7 in midair as he tried to leap too, entangling them both in her cape. "Oh how embar-"
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"100 percent."
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The flashing red core of the Isle of Doom flared white and exploded...