Dimensions of Change
By Zipper
Chapter One
“Fire in the hole! Hit the dirt!”
Dale dove out of instinct, sliding in the mud as a bone-shattering explosion
rocked the foxhole below the dark sky. He could hear the yelps of fear emanating
from below were three surviving pups squealed for their mother, then fell still
as another explosion caused a cave in. Mere hours ago a family of foxes lived
here, now they were silent. Dale hoped for the best, but knew the worst. She
would pay for her atrocities. All of them would pay.
Pay for that day, the day that ended Foxglove’s life and the day Chip lay
in cold blood. Since then the killing hasn’t stopped. Now she’s blocked
out the sun so they could walk in the day. She will pay… Wolfbane and her
lackey will pay with their undead lives!
“But what is it?” Dale quarried, his eyes glazed over from hearing
to many big word in a short time frame.
Gadget gazed upon her latest invention. It consisted simply of two towering,
6-inch copper pipes. Of course she knew it wasn’t that simple. The crystal
harmonic chamber alone took a whole two days to calibrate.
The small mouse had no idea were she had gotten the idea. All she could remember
was a late night alone with some coffee, some very strong coffee. “Golly,
it’s a Trans-phasic Modulation Inducer. It has the ability to display scenes
from around the world as they happen. I had problems getting the proper sine
wave amplitude, but…
Dales eyes glazed once more. She was doing it again. All those big word with
no end in sight. “Make her stop!” he yelled as he ran from the room,
his poor brain turned to mush from sensory overload.
“What’s the matter with Dale?” Gadget asked, realizing for the
first time that the chipmunk had just ran from the room yelling like a banshee.
Monterey cupped his paw around Gadget’s shoulder like a father directing
a daughter. “Now Gadget love, we’ve talked about how you get excited
about explaining you’re inventions. “
Gadget nodded, her sky blue eyes wide with innocents.
“Well… Dale’s having problems understanding you when you start
using technical terms with no explanation.”
“Will he be fine?” She asked, a hint of concern in her voice.
“He’s probably reading his comics as we speak.”
Gadget breathed a sigh of relief; all anxiety fell from her face. “Want
to see it work?”
Widget tightened the final bolt. She rubbed her hands together; the grease
on her paws becoming imbedded with in her pure white albino fur. This was her
last hope for safety, for Grimcrack’s safety. She had to do it! It was
his only chance of living a normal life. A life with out fear, a life in the
sun… oh to feel the sun again.
She looked out the window of the small room. Out side was dark and overcast,
just like every other day. Just the way they liked it. Her red eyes flashed
with haltered for a moment then settled on the monstrosity she had created.
Towers of steal and copper, standing six inches tall, would be her final gift
to her son. If successful, it would whisk him away from this place to some were
better, maybe near the ocean. His father would have liked that, rest his sole.
Her reminiscing was interrupted by a polite cough. A young squirrel stood in
the doorway of the burnt tree house that was once Ranger HQ. She was a tall,
attractive adolescent brown squirrel. Her tail twitched with energy, her coat
was soft and well maintained, but she had a haunted look to her eyes. A look
that told of pain and suffering. A look of innocence lost.
Widget shivered. She gripped her furry arms, feeling the heat bleed through,
letting her know that she was still alive. “How is he Tammy?”
Tammy smiled a smile that could melt a hart of ice, a smile that had won the
heart of a chipmunk once. “He’s asleep.” She stopped for a moment,
not knowing if it was appropriate to ask. “Is it ready?”
“We’ll find out.” Widget said wearily. “Throw the switch.”
Tammy threw the scissor switch on the nearest of the two pillars, releasing
sparks, as it made contacted. A quick whiff of ozone and a slight buzzing were
all that indicated that Widget had succeeded. Widget made note of a calibration
problem. From the sound of it, some were close to a one twentieth of a percent
off. Tolerable, but had to be fine tuned later on.
Gadget grinned. It was working. She had done it right the first time. No unexpected
malfunctions or explosions, just a bit of ozone and from the pitch of the humming,
a quarter point of point one off in the crystal harmonic chamber, well with
in standards. Excitement built as she examined every asset of its operation.
“So what do you want to see?” she said with unbridled pride.
Monterey scratched his head. He was feeling a little home sick of late. “How
‘bout the outback?” he asked wondering how two pipes could show him
a view from half a world away.
“It works!” Tammy exclaimed. “But were are we going?”
Widget had already made up her mind. “A small island named Catalina. It
was no known predators, and we’ll be safe from Gadget and the others.”
Widget spat out her sisters name as she worked dials on the opposite post from
Tammy. She doubled checked the latitude and longitude down to the seconds, then
set a dialfor the altitude desired. No use of stepping though if you stepped
in to solid rock or fell hundreds of feet to their deaths.
After double-checking to make sure everything was correct, she threw a second
scissor switch. Static electricity filled the air, causing fur to stand on end.
Momentarily distracted by her white hair standing on end, Widget peered through
the portal that had just been opened. There it was, a small island twenty-six
mile off the shore of California, Catalina. The view took a couple spins around
the island, showing a small abandoned settlement and harbor the humans once
called Avalon, perfect to her needs. On the ocean side, massive cliff with stood
the pounding of the ocean waves. She watched as the scene settled on the sandy
shore of their new home.
But it was not to last. A sharp shutter, followed sounds of electrical discharges
and circuits frying broke the exstatiuc mood. Tammy had her paw up in the air
with a startled look on her face as she backed away from the switch.
“TURN IT OFF!” Widget yelled over the noise.
Tammy hesitantly reached for the switch, and was thrown back by an electrical
discharge, but not before releasing the switch from it’s on position. She
landed on a table, breaking it in two, and a little blackened, but none the
worse from the ordeal.
Widget was about see how Tammy was doing, but a stifled giggle interrupted her.
“Grimmy, what are you doing out of bed? It’s you’re naptime.”
“Can’t sleep. To noisy.” The two year old stated matter-of-factly,
while at the same time stifling a giggle.
“What’s so funny?” Tammy asked as she patted the soot from her
fur.
“Mommy has big hair!” Grimcrack blurted out, covering his mouth in
a vain attempt to hide his amusement.
Tammy noticed that Widget was still caring a static charge and started to giggle
her self. “Well… it a look!” Tammy snorted out between laughs.
Widget calmly collected her wits and discharged her electric build up on Tammy.
“Now Tammy has big hair!” Grimcrack exclaimed as he rolled on the
ground in hysterics.
“Gadget! Are you ok?” Chip exclaimed as he rushed into her workshop.
Gadget stood, still holding the on switch, paralyzed from the blast and blackened
by soot. The smell of singed fur hung in the air like a fog.
Monterey, Dale and Zipper lay in the far corner groaning. Fortunately, Monty
broke everyone’s fall. Lucky, that is, for every one but Monty. He rubbed
his back out of sympathy. “Cricky, I don’t even want to know what
went wrong.”
Everyone piled out, moaning quietly, leaving Chip standing in the doorway straining
at Gadget. She slowly slumped in rejection and mumbled “Dad, I’ve
failed again…” quietly under her breath.
Foxglove lightly knocked on the solid oak door as she opened it. “Gadget…?”
she whispered softly.
Gadget sat face down at a desk in the corner, blue prints, schematics, and data
sheets scattered about haphazardly. “Go away,” she mumbled, “I’m
not hungry.”
Foxglove almost retreated then and there, but she knew the look on Gadget’s
hair-hidden face, the look of desperation, of sorrow, the look of a failure.
Foxglove knew that face all to well. It was one she had worn often, but was
now hidden in some corner of a dark closet, deep with in her heart. The only
stop gap she had against that face were her friends. She had to be that friend
to Gadget now, just as Gadget had been to her many times before.
“I brought you some soup.” Foxglove chirped, hoping to sound cheerful.
Inside it felt like that moth she ate wasn’t quite dead and was struggling
to get out.
Gadget looked up, revealing sunken eyes with dark bags under them. Her hair
was knotted and full of tangles and her fur was matted on her cheeks with the
salty tears that now soaked the blue print below her.
Foxglove hesitated momentarily at the ghostly image before her. “It’s
acorn noodle…”
“I’m not hungry…” Gadget said with a little more forcefulness
to her voice.
Foxglove swallowed hard. “You haven’t eaten all day Gadget. Dale and
the others are worried. They asked me to talk to you.”
Gadget’s eyes flashed white hot with an internal flame. She cleared the
desk in one swoop of the arm, causing papers to fly everywhere. “Why does
every one persist upon this incessant Cheeriness!?” She yelled as she circled
the desk. “First Chip, then Monty, now you. It’s more than a mouse
can stand!” She stood face to face with Foxglove now; the soup long since
had fallen to the floor. “Ever since my father died, every ones kept a
happy face on around me. Well I’m tired of it!” Gadget yelled. Suddenly
her knees gave out. She sunk to the floor. “Dad, I’m tired of it…’
she said through sniffles.
“I know how you feel…” Foxglove comforted.
Gadget looked up, her eyes glistened with tears like the ocean on a calm day.
“No one could know how I feel.” She said with self-pity.
Foxglove sighed. “I can. When I was young, I lost my parents. My whole
life has been spent with people trying to insolate me from the out side world.
I never learned how to express my self, so people never knew how I felt. My
self-esteem plummeted, which prevented me from telling people how I felt. It
was a wicked circle. One causing another, over and over again, never ceasing
on my downward spiral. Then I hit bottom with Freddy. I stuck around because
she didn’t sweet-talk me, yet I was demeaned so my esteem never came up.
“Why did you change? What’s different now?” Gadget asked sniffling.
“The Rangers. You guys treated me so kindly, but with out the sugary sweetness
I used to get. Gadget. we’re really not that unlike you and I. I suspect
our pasts aren’t very different. Oh, sure, people and places are dissimilar,
but the under lying motives are the same. You just have to realize that we’re
here for you. Don’t shut us out. We may not know exactly how you feel,
but we can listen. You’re not alone… turn to us.”
Gadget wiped away a tear. “I never thought of it that way.”
“It took me a year or so to figure it out. Of course spending all that
time with Dale… ah… you guys help. You’re like family to me Gadget,
a sister. The only one I’ve ever known.”
“Thanks.”
Foxglove smiled and turned her attention towards the two massive pillars. “What
went wrong?”
Gadget was shaken out of her stupor by the sudden shift in conversation. “Hmmm?
Oh, my invention. How did you know something went wrong?”
“It’s hard to miss a couple of enormous water pipes in a room. Also,
that’s where the scorch marks emanate from, plus Dale told me. He’s
so cute when he fidgets.” Foxglove’s eyes fixed as she reminisced.
Gadget pretended not to notice. “It was supposed to be able to show live
scenes from around the world by creating a displacement field that could transsend
the borders of space. Quite simple really except I have no idea what went wrong.”
“Sounds like something out of those movies on Thursday nights. I think
there called Sci-Fi’s, excepted in those they go to other times or dimensions
but I never actually thought…”
“What was that?” Gadgets eyes started to regain there past luster.
“What, the Sci-Fi’s?”
“No dimensions…”
“What? Half the movies always have something to change time or go to an
alternate dimension.”
“That’s it, the Dimensional Calibrator! I forgot to set it.”
Now Foxglove was confused. At least she had held out for a minuet or two before
she was totally lost.
Gadget scurried off, lost in the excitement of figuring out the problem at hand.
Moments later, Dale quietly knocked on Gadgets door and, finding it partially
open, entered. “Helloooo? Anyone here? Gadget? Foxy?” Dale paused
for a moment. Something wasn’t right. Papers were haphazardly laying on
the floor. Gadgets new invention was humming in the corner yet had no other
sign that it was operating. Could they of been blown into small atoms by some
unknown force?
Dale searched the room franticly. He took a step forward and felt something
sticky on his foot. He looked down. A pool of semi-transparent liquid soaked
the ground surrounded by… by splotches of red fluid! “CHIP! MONTY!
EVERYONE, HELLLPPPP!”
‘This has to be a dream!’ Dale thought to himself ‘Did that monstrosity
in the corner vaporized them? No! I was stepping in there intestines! Oh Foxy,
I’m so sorry.”
Is Dale having a nightmare induced by a late night horror film, or has he stumbled upon the only remains of his fallen friends? What happened to Gadget and Foxglove? Were they vaporized as he feared, or did they nearly step out for a coffee and a scone or two? Find out in the Next installment of ‘Dimensions of Change.’
‘Dimensions of Change’ was produced, written, edited, and well, brought
into life by Zipper the Magnificent! He requests that you now bow down to his
greatness, or at least find that he’s an ok fell’a after all.
All Characters except for Widget and Grimcrack are the trademarks of Disney
Animation or some other Disney company (who knows, or cares). John W. Nowak
is credited for the creation of Widget and Grimcrack. Sorry John, but since
I didn’t get Disney’s permission, I thought I’d keep with precedence
and not get yours. (Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, eh?)
Gadget, or the Government, does not deny or acknowledge the existence of a Trans-phasic
Modulation Inducer. Any inquirers will be placed on hold and forgotten about,
unless you’re selling something, then death will be swift and sure.