…and the ladies all love him
The Doclopedia #3,018
366 Days, 366 Paragraphs: #257
Chapter Thirty One: Bad News For Porcero
The Quadcycles had made excellent time during the night, averaging 30 miles an hour, with speeds as high as 45 or 50 miles an hour on some downhill slopes. At dawn, they had just turning north towards Denva. Right now, they had stopped for some sleep and resfreshment.
High Curator Porcero had slept most of the night and was quite refreshed. He was now walking back from a leg stretching stroll and was looking forward to a bit of breakfast and news from Mertina.
When he checked his comslate, there were two messages from her. The first simply said “Rebellion has started”, while the second, written twenty minutes later, said “All is going well. Extra forces inside.”
Porcero was delighted to hear this and sent off a message saying, “Excellent! Inform me when everything has been taken care of.” He then dove into his breakfast with great gusto. Today was shaping up to be the best day of his life.
Back at the Museum, Grand High Curator Sontora placed Mertina’s comslate on her desk and smiled. This was going to be an awful lot of fun. Porcero would now continue on his way thinking that the Museum was his, when in reality, the rebellion was over and done with. She had felt a twinge of guilt when she told High Curator Ohlong to send the false Imperials into the canyon, but it hadn’t lasted long. They had been training for a slaughter for over thirty years. Deprived of it, they had gone insane and could not be reasoned with.
She would string Porcero along until tonight, when he would be another 200 or more miles away, then tell him the truth. She wished she could be there to see the traitorous bastard’s reaction when he learned what really happened. Of course, she would leave out the part about his comslate being “hacked”. He might find that out on his own, but until then, she could use it against him.
Just now though, she had to put aside thoughts of Porcero and go to the big celebratory party for the squashing of the rebellion and the miraculous return to life of High Curator Ohlong and many others thought dead or lost.
A couple of hours later, Porcero got a message saying, “Mission accomplished. Awaiting any further orders”, to which he replied with several additional orders. After getting a response saying they would be carried out, he checked in with Hadolfus.
There, the news was less good. While Hadolfus was on what he was sure was the right trail, he had not yet caught the boy and his confederates. Porcero fired off a terse and motivational reply which was rewarded with assurances that his efforts would be redoubled.
That was not really good enough for Porcero, so he sent out a message to all Seekers within 200 miles if Hadolfus, telling them to go help him out. The little twit wouldn’t like it, but what he liked was of no concern to Porcero.
Having taken care of business, Porcero began thinking about what he would do with all of the crystal relics he found. The old books said that they were powerful tools, but gave no account of how they had been used by the Star People. He guessed that there would be a fair amount of trial & error. He would use Trainees for that part.
With four more hours left for this rest stop, Porcero amused himself by tearing the pages out of the diary of all the past unsuccessful rebellions. Up until now, it had always been kept and updated in secret, then passed on from Master to Student until the time was ripe for yet another attempt at taking over the North American Museum. He himself had kept it hidden from age twenty until now, learning from the mistakes of the past. He was sure that his fake Imperials had been the key. Nobody had ever seemed to think of that tactic before, which is why they went down in defeat.
No, it had taken a true genius, himself, to come up with a takeover plan that finally succeeded where others had failed. There would be no more need for this book, because he would soon start recruiting and training very young children, so as to insure maximum loyalty. He would also father a child by a suitable woman, so as to insure a properly trained successor. After that, he would tell the other Museums around the world how to stage a winning rebellion, assuming he didn’t just use the crystal relics to take them over, too.
That thought pleased him and he smiled as he tossed torn out pages into the campfire.
Many hours later, the Grand High Curator was again in her office, this time accompanied by High Curator Ohlong and several others. All of them had had a bit to drink and they had decided to compose a proper final message to Porcero. It had been agreed that they had come up with a good one and that Ohlong should send it. He did so, pausing several times to laugh out loud. When he was done, he sent it off. All of them hoped there would be a reply, but they didn’t count on it.
Riding along in the dark, Porcero was fast asleep and dreaming of himself sitting on a throne, ruling the world. It was near midnight when he felt his comslate vibrating. There had been few messages all day, but they had all been good news. He wondered why he was being messaged so late at night. Had they perhaps found the secret hideaway of the late Grand High Curator? He hoped so.
He looked at the message on his comslate and froze. It read:
“Dear Porky,
We regret to inform you that all of your messages you received from here today have been made up by us. Your takeover attempt failed before it ever really got started, much like the failed takeovers of the past. I guess you rebels never learn.
We were on to you from the start, you poor fool. Your rebellion was full of traitors who were loyal to our side. We knew every time you so much as farted, Porky.
Your “Quiet Empire” setup was inspired, we’ll admit that. A pity that they all ended up at the bottom of the Great Canyon without once drawing any blood.
If you want to come back and discuss all this with us, we have a nice set of chains and a pickaxe waiting for you. If not, we suggest you run fast and far, because you’ll be hunted, bet on it.
I hope those quadcycles of yours are fast, because the transport we have our agents using to get to the boy and the relic is probably at least as fast. Faster, actually.
Goodbye, Porky, you miserable little man. Keep looking over your shoulder, because sooner or later, one of ours will be there.
High Curator Martik Ohlong for the Grand High Curator and the Museum staff.”
Sitting behind Master Porcero, Curators Banig and Lorson had been resting when they heard him start to moan. Looking at him, they saw him shaking uncontrollably as the moan turned into a scream of utter rage. Both of them hoped his anger would not be taken out on them.
Porcero was angrier than he had ever been in his life. He had failed! Failed completely, even with having a secret attack force. Nothing had changed at the Museum aside from all of his loyal troops being put in chains and his warriors being killed. He had lost, just as badly as any of those rebels of past centuries had. That son of a bitch Ohlong, who had obviously faked his own death to work on stopping the rebellion, would be laughing at him now. They would all be laughing at him now!
Porcero was far to angry to feel any fear yet. He shook and raged and even frothed at the mouth a bit. At one point, he almost threw away the comslate, but caught himself before he could do it. Instead, he screamed at the Curators to speed it up, with all four pedaling at once and sleep breaks now only three hours long. They did as he said, fearful that he was going mad.
As he sat there quivering with rage, Porcero tried to imagine how things could possibly go worse. At that moment, a large bird flew over the quadcycle and shit upon his head.
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