Canto 25 – Count Nefaria
The underground of White Palm was riddled with ancient tunnels and warrens that may have been caused by nature, or may have been evidence of a lost civilization. They meandered everywhere just under the surface of an entire planet. They varied in temperature from cool and dark, to bright-hot ovens. Navigating them was perilous.
Dana Cole led the way with Trav Dalgoda hovering right behind her. She knew the passages Nefaria used, and she made Trav hold the densitometer, a gravitic device meant to read matter density and reveal open spaces, to read the makeup and general shape of what lay ahead. Tron and Maggie came behind, pistols and lasers at the ready. Artran came next with a stuffed Pleezy-bear under one arm. Arkin Cloudstalker and Sheherazade came after the boy, also fully armed and ready. The rest of the ground troops covered all exits from the Oasis City underground.
“We have to go carefully,” said Dana Cole. “Nefaria imported tunnel fuzzies from Galtorr to serve as underground guard dogs.”
“Tunnel fuzzies?” asked Tron.
“You know,” she explained, “those acid-spitting green spiders with the hundreds of eyes? The ones with the plastic fur that make insulation good enough to bathe in lava without getting burnt.”
“Fascinating,” said Cloudstalker ironically.
“There’s a large corridor ahead,” said Goofy, grinning. “There’s a really big room beyond that.” The densitometer made his face glow with unnatural purple light.
“This place sure is spooky,” said Artran.
Without warning, a stream of bright yellow-green acid flew over their heads and melted an alcove into the sandstone on the far side of them.
“Tunnel fuzzy!” cried Dana, scrambling to get down under cover as she looked frantically for the source of the toxic goo.
“I see it!” cried Tron, lasering into another dark alcove with his green pulse-laser rifle.
Acid splattered everywhere, leaving pock marks in the walls, sores on exposed skin, and holes in clothing and body armor. Artran began to cry.
“Are you hurt, Snookums?” asked Maggie in parental agony.
“No. It’s Little Goofy!” The boy held up his now headless Pleezy-bear, the fuzzy smiley face burned off by acid.
“Keep a sharp eye out!” warned Dana. “That could happen to any of us!”
Watching warily, the assault team inched forward. Trav’s nervous eyes were glued to the densitometer screen. They eased into the major corridor. A quick firefight dispatched three of Nefaria’s police robots. They were swept quickly away by the surprise attack.
As the group bolted through the door into the big chamber, they came face to face with Nefaria and Sorcerer 6. Neither the monocled, gray-haired villain, nor the white-skinned Synthezoid were happy about the turn of events.
“Well, Captain Tron and friends!” said Nefaria, trying to act suave and sophisticated though obviously rattled. “What brings you to my humble home?”
“I do,” said Dana Cole. “You and the other members of Expedition One betrayed me. One of your Sorcerers nearly killed me!”
“Believe me,” said Sorcerer 6, “no one regrets the failed attempt more than I.”
“Oh, I believe you all right, you slimy white android!” Dana shot the new Sorcerer right between the eyes with an auto burst from her advanced combat rifle. Microchips and synthetic flesh flew everywhere.
“Now, let’s not get vindictive!” pleaded Count Nefaria, his monocle falling out.
“Oh, I think we should!” cried Trav stupidly; pulling out the Skortch ray he had taken from the corpse of Sorcerer 3. He skortched Nefaria before Tron could grab the illegal weapon. The stunned Count dissolved into hot ashes in seconds, completely disintegrated. The monocle tinkled as it hit the stone floor.
“You numb-noggin!” cried Tron, grabbing the deadly weapon out of Goofy’s hands. “We still needed vital information out of that criminal bug-head!”
“Oh… gee… I’m sorry, boss,” said Trav, humbled.
“Kill the Goof now!” insisted Maggie.
Dana stepped in front of her beloved imbecile.
“Please, forgive Uncle Goofy,” pleaded Artran.
Tron looked down at his son’s cherubic face and lowered his guns. “I forgive you, Goofy, but you will make it up to me with some hard work. Man that densitometer! We’ve got to find Nefaria’s prison and his treasure house.”
“Maybe Miss Cole can help with those, too,” suggested Cloudstalker.
“Maybe she can,” nodded Tron.
Sheherazade nudged with her foot the ruin that was once the Synthezoid, Sorcerer 6. “Do you suppose this is the last one of these?”
“I doubt it,” said Cloudstalker. “It has too much of the stink of Syn Corporation about it.”
“I hope it isn’t the last,” muttered Tron. “I need to kill that conehead a few more times myself just to feel good about it.”
Catch a Falling Star 
The 13th Sense
I know that you are probably thinking, “What the heck are you thinking, Mickey? There are really only five senses!”
And I am probably thinking, (ignoring the fact that I should know for certain what thinking is present at least in my own stupid head), “Oh, I think you are probably wrong about that,” considering carefully that I should only think this and not say it out loud, because people get mad when you suggest that you are smarter than they are.”
Besides the five senses we all claim of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, there is also that one people often refer to as “the sixth sense”, and by that phrase they don’t necessarily mean that you “see dead people who don’t know they are dead”. Instead, that sense is kinda like a sense of intuition. A feeling that you simply know what is about to occur, or you know something about something that you could only really know if you have ESP… Or if you are Spiderman, it is your “Spider Sense”… wiggly lines radiating from your comic-book head.
And what about the sense of hot and cold? Or the sense that you can’t breathe the air in the same room with your cigar-smoking Republican uncle? You know, the one with all the toxic opinions you are forced to listen to too often? And there’s a sense of contentment. Or the sense of happiness. A sense of dread. There are all kinds of senses that your magnificent stupid-old brain constantly responds to that you really haven’t been counting.
,
Of course, I am not writing about any of those today. I am writing about that old “Sense Number Thirteen”, the sense of certainty that every pessimist lives by, the sense that your natural daily bad luck won’t kill you today, but only because it would all be over and prevent more suffering tomorrow if it did.
Yes, it is Sense Number Thirteen that makes you prepare yourself for the worst, because you simply have the sense that it is destined to happen. I dread going to the mailbox. I know I will hate what I find there. This week I found a letter from the IRS, who has already accepted my 2017 return and the first installment of my tax payment, suggesting that they may reopen my case in order to determine if I owe them more money. And I got the hospital bill that I have been dreading because I cannot afford to pay it.
I dread walking the dog also because there are two pickup trucks, one black and one silver, that routinely roar through the 30-mile-an-hour neighborhood doing sixty or seventy. One of them is going to run over my dog while she has me on the leash, or maybe even run over one of neighbor Frank’s grandchildren. Anyway, we are preparing by organizing a neighborhood petition and complaining to the police. The Thirteenth Sense really screws with my life. But it forces me to prepare.
The hospital payment department told me that they are going to send paperwork that will help me pay the debt by forgiving part of it since I am already bankrupt over medical bills. I was taken pleasantly by surprise by that. I have so far successfully avoided thinking about the IRS. Those jack-booted shock troops apparently aren’t going to show up at my door until next week. And the police cruiser has been on our street twice already since I last talked to Frank, and they put out one of those speed limit signs that shows you in bright red lights how much over the speed limit you are going.
So, there’s the saving grace. A pessimist gets to be happier in the long run than the optimist. By preparing for the worst, the pessimist is ready for the bad thing to happen, and either deals with it as it comes, or is pleasantly surprised at an outcome devoid of extra suffering. A pessimist is never taken by surprise for the worse. I’m glad I have a 13th Sense. It helps me be a HAPPY stupid old pessimist.
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