Nap Lapkin: Terminated
There was a crackling of electricity, a quick flash of light, and suddenly, a large hulking figure was deposited in the alley. Naked as a two-hundred-and-forty-pound jaybird. The newspapers and other bits of debris that were scooped up and hurled around in the obviously-time-travel-related event were slowly making their way back down to the pavement, replete with the requisite amount of filth and puddles of unknown but terrible smelling liquids.
The figure slowly stirred, framed by dumpsters and terrible-smelling cardboard boxes of unknown origin. And if you want to talk unknown origins... that figure had it in spades. Once he steals a leather jacket and a pair of dark sunglasses from some tough that has it coming, he might blend in with normal humans but standing naked in that dark alley he definitely had a strong “cyborg assassin” vibe.
Yes, he was standing. He went from stirring to standing. Try and keep up.
On the other side of town, there was a very similar crackling and flashing taking place, except the figure deposited in into the shadowy backstreet was more dapper than hulking. A nice way of saying older. Distinguished even in his nakedness. Although his alley was much less foreboding, it did come with the necessary privacy that time-traveling gentlemen look for in an alley. It gave him the opportunity to compose himself. He swiveled his neck around slowly and said only one word: “Madonna.”
Then, a few moments later, he said another: “Pants.”
It’s at this juncture I should point out that if you’re seeing any similarities between these opening paragraphs of the story and the movie The Terminator, it’s really not my fault. I’m just reporting things as they happened, to the best of my rather limited abilities. If a spaceship landed in New York and someone looking a lot like Darth Vader stepped out and blasted the city a new one with a weapon that appeared strikingly like a AG-2G quad laser cannon, the Star Wars lawyers couldn’t sue the newspaper that reported it, could they?
Really. Could they? I’m asking sincerely. It will determine exactly how much I can mention about the terminatoresque bad guy in the upcoming story.
Meanwhile in Moab, Utah, a solitary shape was making his way up Dead Horse Point and he wasn’t happy about it. He glanced down at the rocky expanse below him before looking up at the expanse above him. Neither expanse filled him with particular enthusiasm for continuing the climb but at this point, he was committed.
The people at the office told him that Tom Cruise hadn’t actually climbed this rock for the opening of Mission Impossible 2 and had instead used ropes and pulleys and trick camera angles, but it was mission impossible to tell Nap Lapkin anything. Once he’d seen the movie, he knew he was going to have to conquer this hunk of rock. Interestingly enough, the FBI, CIA, and NSA spent millions of dollars between them making sure he never saw the movie but thanks to a free weekend of HBO and his on-again/off-again romantic partner Madonna Axion being AWOL, their plans were FUBAR. The next thing they knew, he was on his way to Utah.
It wasn’t easy being the world’s most foremost revered super-spy. The title came with a lot of real responsibilities that Nap was only too eager to ignore. It was the self-imposed criteria that made his life difficult. Once he’d seen Tom Cruise do the climb, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the women in his office had seen it and asked themselves “Could Lapkin do that?”
“Holy shit. I’m only half way up and my hands are killing me,” he muttered to himself. “Some chalk would come in handy about now.”
Obviously, he’d headed down to the local rock gym to find out the proper way to climb before boarding his flight to Utah but he had grown bored after only a few minutes of hearing the various tricks of the trade. When he saw some guy hanging there and then reaching behind him to stick his hand into a little bag of powder on his belt, he swore to himself he’d rather plummet to his death than get caught doing such an effeminate thing.
It appeared that the plummeting option might now be on the table.
Being the crack reader that you are, it’s probably occurred to you already that I’ve already doomed this tale to the scrapheap of history by including three pop culture references on the very first page. No tall lanky earless genderless humanoid in the year 3127 is going to ask the class to open their books on important works of literature to page 37 for a story that references The Terminator, Star Wars, and Mission Impossible 2 in the opening 800 words.
Now that the pressure is off, I can relax and just let things flow where they will.
It’s a shame that the killer cyborg didn’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That would have made things easier for everyone involved (although if you think I was going to type out Schwarzenegger more than once you’re crazy). Instead, it struck an uncanny resemblance to Lou Ferrigno, which makes the opening sentence that much more accurate. I wanted to make it look like André René Roussimoff- you no doubt know him as André the Giant- but what advanced artificial intelligence would send that cyborg back in time with the intentions of blending in?
I understand if you’ve leapt to the conclusion that the cyborg immediately went looking for a phone book so he could look up the home address of his intended victim but I’m going to have to stop you right there. This is 2018, not 1984. Don’t go leaping ahead.
The Lou Ferrigno-looking cyborg had acquired clothing, sunglasses, and enough weaponry to choke a horse. One minute he’s standing up in an alley and the next, the body count is at three.
With calculated efficiency, he stomped leisurely into a Starbucks and sat down at a computer with a “Free Wi-Fi” sign sitting next to it. The machines knew that their target wasn’t going to be easy to find so he didn’t even bother Googling her name. Instead he Googled sites where they would provide people’s addresses at no charge.
He typed M-a-d-o-n-n-a-A-x-i-o-n and hit enter. The site cheerfully asked for his credit card information.
He clicked out of it and went to the second one on the Google list.
For long minutes, he was prompted for details about his requested person and then he had to wait while the site located her. After a few minutes, the site politely inquired about his credit card information.
Was that a small puff of smoke that escaped from his left ear?
He was about to click on the third option provided by Google when a perky barista approached and asked if he would like to try a Sous Vide Egg Bite.
“Leave me alone.” The cyborg’s voice sounded like an angry Michael Bolton. These are the crucial details that really bring stories to life and separate the novice writer from a veteran word-slinger like myself.
Sensing a case of the Mondays, the barista switched gears and asked if he could bring him a Teavana Shaken Iced Tea Infusion.
The third website jumped right to asking him for his credit card.
“Is that a no on the steeped fruit tea, big fella?” asked the chipper young coffee-slinger.
Moments later, the body count had jumped to eighteen.
I’m going to try and hold off telling you the identity of the second figure that made the trip back in time. Believe me, it’s killing me not to tell you, but I think we’ll both be glad I hold off as long as I can.
After relieving a homeless man of his clothes, this mysterious time traveler walked to the nearest intersection to get his bearings. If you’re worried about the homeless man who had his clothes stolen, you can relax. It’s widely known that homeless people wear most of their clothes at the same time so that at any given time, they might be wearing a half dozen shirts and at least three pairs of pants. Our hero (?) simply had him strip off his least favorite items. One look at the underwear options had him convinced that free-ballin’ was the way to go.
A quick glance at the street sign and he knew exactly where he was and, more importantly, where he had to go. For he enjoyed one advantage the cyborg assassin did not; he knew where Madonna lived.
He broke into a sprint.
He was pretty nimble for an older guy.
Somewhere in an unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington, a man sat behind an enormous desk and his enormous phone began to ring.
“Yes?”
“Operation Fallen Eagle has come to fruition.”
The behind the desk rolled his eyes slightly and asked “Has the target been confirmed as safe?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ok then. Have the construction crew liquidated.”
“Already done, sir,” replied the man on the other end of the phone. He continued, “There is only one loose end to tie up and it will be as if it never happened. It has been an honor to serve, sir.”
With that, the very unnecessarily patriotic man put his sidearm into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
“Fucking Lapkin,” the man said as he placed the phone back in its cradle.
He was a few hundred feet from the top when Nap fell. He had been stuck for over an hour in the same spot, his knee wedged into a crack and seemingly nowhere for him to keep moving upward. Going back down wasn’t an option. He instead spent some time fuming over the comments made at the rock gym about the Tom Cruise ascent during Mission Impossible 2. Two complaints in particular stuck out: the first being that nobody would jump sideways and down during a climb. They went on and on about how it would be impossible to deal with the momentum associated with such a maneuver; second, seasoned climbers would never turn their back to the wall while hanging off two handholds with their arms extended sideways.
He had made a mental note to make sure that at some point in the climb, he would jump sideways and down, then turn his back to the wall while hanging off two handholds with his arms extended sideways.
It was as important to him that this happen as it was that he made the climb in the first place. When he was meeting a beautiful woman for the first time, he needed to be able to catch her eye with a look that said “I have jumped sideways and down then turned my back to the wall while hanging off two handholds with my arms extended sideways.” You can’t fake a look like that. That’s what other men never understood. It’s why he could bed any woman he wanted.
There was a price to be paid for this gift and he was in the middle of paying for it.
The wind had picked up a bit and fatigue had begun to set in. He looked around and saw a small ledge that had escaped his notice earlier. Mostly because it was so damn sideways and down from where he was at the moment. I mean, really sideways and down. Ridiculously sideways and absurdly down.
“Fuck Tom Cruise,” he said softly and leapt.
His foot hit hard and began to slide. His hands clawed wildly for purchase and momentarily found nothing but air. His ass bounced off rock and he realized he only had a second before he ran out of ledge, gravity, and momentum, and all those douche bags at the rock gym would be proved right. He extended both arms fully before dropping over the ledge... and hung there. His back to the wall while hanging off two handholds with his arms extended sideways.
A triumphant roar escaped his lips. He looked down at the dizzying depths below him. He looked left and right for somewhere else to grab.
There was nowhere else to grab.
“Well, this sucks.”
His fingers began to ache and he felt a quivering in his arms. In the distance, a large bird began slowly moving towards him.
“Of course. A fucking eagle. Not even big enough to carry my weight. Perfect.”
His mind raced. Was there a way to get a bunch of eagles to head over and lend him a hand?
“Is it a gaggle of eagles? That doesn’t sound right. Flock?”
It’s not a gaggle or a flock. A group of eagles is a convocation. Because the eagle is the symbol of this great nation, Nap would later look this up.
It was ten torturous minutes before the eagle finally made its way over to Nap. It landed just above his head and leaned over to look him the eye.
“Come to eat my liver?” Nap asked him. The fact that he could verbalize any thought at this point was nothing less than heroic. Most of his fingernails had ripped off, his arms and chest were on fire, and sweat was dripping off him and beginning its six-hundred-foot fall to the talus slope.
The fact that he was making a Prometheus reference should give you an idea of the type of man we’re dealing with here. Able to hang from a ledge using only two handholds with his arms extended sideways for ten minutes and still come up with a reference from Greek mythology. A rather appropriate one at that.
The eleventh minute ended up being a bit trickier though and by that I mean his hands gave out and he plummeted to a certain death on the rocks below.
That is until giant air bags suddenly inflated underneath him and broke his fall.
He was not expecting this rescue and even resented it a little as he had made peace with slipping this mortal coil with a hundred feet still to fall. Of all the ways a man can bite it, he ranked this near the top so when the bags popped open and he felt himself bouncing instead of splatting, he was of mixed emotions.
“Those bastards! Those rotten head-shrinkers. I guess I’m getting too predictable.”
The fact that you’re such a valuable asset might be a nice thing to reflect on until you realize that at the end of the day, you’re still just an asset.
He could only hope that anyone who knew about this little adventure had been terminated. He had a reputation to uphold after all.
He reached for his phone and requested a lift back to Washington.
Madonna Axion’s two story townhouse sat in a quiet suburb of Washington D.C. Given the fact that she was rarely home, it was wholly unremarkable and provided her only the basic necessities of life: a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, a weapon’s locker and, until recently, a hummingbird garden.
In her line of work, it was important to be able to relax, so three years ago she had taken the time to research what type of plants hummingbirds are attracted to in order to create a cornucopia of dining options for the little guys. In the end, she planted six different flowers that she was assured by the local gardening shop would make her hummingbird garden the hip spot to be if you were interested in nectar.
For the first summer, all six flowers grew happily and occasionally a hummingbird would drop by and Madonna would be filled with a child-like curiosity at the way their little wings would be flapping away as they hovered and sampled the garden’s bill of fare.
The second summer, one of the vines that sported long thin reddish flowers that the hummingbirds seemed to cherish decided to make a play for more room. By May, it had taken over the entire garden, wrapping itself around each of the other contenders and strangling the living shit out of them. When August rolled around, the war was over and only one plant was left standing.
This spring the garden was obviously no longer enough for this voracious vine. It had raced up the gutter downspout to the roof, over the trellis onto the deck and along the fence to the neighbor’s yard. It seemed to be growing a foot a day and had I not decided to make the cyborg assassin the main point of this story, it would have made a great antagonist.
Speaking of which, does this plant play any role whatsoever in the story about the cyborg assassin?
No. It does not.
“So why even mention it?” you might be asking yourself.
Because it’s enormous and to try and describe Madonna’s house without bringing up the gargantuan flowering vine that appeared to be consuming the back half of the aforementioned would be irresponsible. It would be like skipping past the fact that Madonna had two rooms where she had wallpapered over a stucco wall because she liked the look of it or that she sincerely believed that at one time in human history, dogs could talk but were so self-absorbed and needy, eventually it was best for all concerned if they stopped.
Honestly, I’m not sure I like your attitude. You’re going to have to trust me a bit more.
One of the upsides of this garden-denizen-run-amok is that it attracted great flocks or gaggles or convocations or swarms or herds of hummingbirds and the upside of this was that from sunrise to sunset there was a low hum that could be felt inside Madonna’s house. The only time it stopped was when there was a visitor. It acted like a cheap home security system.
As Madonna left the couch to acquire a beverage before the commercials ended and her television program began again, the humming stopped. Instinctively, her hand reached behind her back to the loaded SIG226 she kept in her belt. She crept up to the window and saw a man approaching her front door. Seconds later, the doorbell sprung into action and her hand relaxed.
Very rarely are enemy agents polite enough to ring the bell before shooting you.
She opened the door and there stood a man who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. It was hard to tell because he appeared to be in tip top shape and was soaked with sweat from his head to his feet. She immediately recognized him. Sort of.
“Nap?”
He appeared momentarily startled by being recognized so easily.
“What the hell happened to you? You look terrible.”
He appeared momentarily startled by being insulted.
“Madonna... you look amazing. Can we talk inside?”
Once safely ensconced in the house, Nap seemed to relax a bit and took a deep breath. The droning of hummingbirds started up again.
“Why do you look so fucking old?” inquired Madonna.
“Because I am. I know you will find this hard to believe but I’m from the future.”
It was quite impressive how fast her SIG 226 materialized in Madonna’s hand and how quickly it was pressed against Nap’s forehead.
“Try again,” she said between clenched teeth and dragged the tip of her gun across his face as if trying to wipe away make-up or tear away a mask.
“Ouch,” Nap said between clenched teeth.
He continued. “I know how it might sound, but you’re in grave danger. A robot from the future has been sent back in time to kill you because your son is going to lead the resistance movement that eventually defeats them and saves all humanity.”
“Riiiiiiight....” She replied and slowly started to squeeze the trigger.
“Wait Madonna! It’s true. I know it sounds just like the plot of The Terminator but it’s true. I’m not sure how much time we have to talk. Thankfully the killer cyborg doesn’t know where you live and there aren’t phone books anymore. That should give us some time.”
“Or he could just find out where I live from any number of people in the human resources department,” she said in a sarcastic tone.
“I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Outside, the humming stopped.
Madonna and Future Nap wasted no time in slipping out the back and headed for Madonna’s car. They were just closing the doors when they heard what could only be the sound of a motorcycles crashing dramatically through her front door. This was verified seconds later when they saw the same motorcycle crashing dramatically through her back door.
I keep saying dramatically because a human rider would be unable to duplicate just how impressively the motorcycle made short work of these wood structures. A metal endoskeleton comes in handy when you need the extra weight to stay seated on your hog.
I said hog in the hopes you’d somehow associate me with being a motorcycle guy and therefore I’d seem a bit more badass. Writer by day, outlaw by night kind of stuff. I realize most writers don’t pander quite as obviously as this but we’ve already established that no tall lanky earless genderless humanoid in the year 3127 will be reading this, so I have to grab for the gusto while I can.
A thought shared, although not consciously, by the cyborg. Completely unaware of how badass he looked crashing through not one but two doors, he scooped up one of the numerous shotguns he’d managed to acquire from local gun shops and the woman at the FBI who he had coerced into giving him Madonna’s home address and drew a bead on his quarry.
Unlike the timid woman Arnold S chased around in The Terminator, Madonna was a trained field agent sitting behind bulletproof glass and not the type of woman to be overly impressed by such door-crashing antics. In fact, she flipped him off and mouthed “Eat me, robot” before starting the car, throwing it in reverse and punching the gas.
Watching his bullets bounce off his prey’s windshield did not amuse the cyborg. In fairness though, nothing would have amused him as it’s impossible to amuse a cyborg and while it was also impossible to irritate a cyborg, it would have been difficult to believe he wasn’t irritated based on his reaction vis-à-vis the bullets failing to kill Madonna.
That reaction? Gunning his motorcycle, tossing away his shotgun, and grabbing a large automatic weapon. He wasn’t pissed but he certainly looked pissed.
Madonna was pissed and certainly looked it. She glared at Future Nap. “Tell me what’s going on, Nap,” she demanded.
“I already did. I’m from the future. He’s from the future. He’s a robot and he wants to kill you because if he kills you he kills your unborn son.”
Automatic gunfire sprayed across the front of the car.
“Fuck this robot,” said Madonna and began to lower her window. Out came her SIG as she pulled the wheel hard to the right. The cyborg sensed an opportunity and accelerated just as Madonna squeezed the trigger and sent two bullets into the front wheel of his front tire. The next thing the cyborg sensed was flying over the handle bars and into the car door. Hard.
“Who the fuck does he think he’s trying to kill?” she asked Nap in a manner that indicated that she felt a bit disappointed by the efforts of a supposedly-advanced killer robot from the future. She continued to hold the wheel to the right until she was facing forwards and then once again pushing the accelerator to the floor.
In the rearview mirror, she saw the cyborg stand up and then jog to a nearby car. Seconds later, it began to give chase.
Madonna began evasive driving in an effort to lose him, making screeching left turns followed by screeching right turns (if this is ever made into a movie, this will eat up at least five minutes, weigh heavily in the trailer and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars).
As she drove, she turned to Future Nap and asked, “So what do we do? Do you have pipe bombs and such to kill it?”
Probably a good time to mention that Nap hadn’t taken his eyes off Madonna the entire time, the expression on his face a mix of wonder and infatuation. When Madonna finally realized how much he was enjoying the proceedings, she knew it really was Nap from the future. Only he could be that big an idiot.
When he finally snapped out of it, he said “To be honest, I didn’t have time to make any pipe bombs. They wouldn’t do anything but blow his skin off anyway.”
“That’s great, Nap. So what do we do? I can’t shake him.”
“Don’t worry. I have a plan. By any chance do you know of any local warehouses that do metal fabrication?” asked Nap.
At this point, Madonna drove through either a collection of garbage cans in a narrow alley or a stack of crates containing fresh produce, doesn’t really matter either way. Just as long as you know that the entire time Nap and Madonna are conversing, there is still a lot of adrenaline-inducing action going on around them. Sprinkle in gunfire and causing other cars to crash into each other to taste.
“Why would you ask a question like that? Did time travel scramble your brain?” yelled Madonna at her passenger, who was still trying to shake off the effects of seeing such a magnificent woman again after so many years apart.
“What we need is a four-hundred-ton hydraulic press,” he said in a manner that seemed to indicate that a four-hundred-ton hydraulic press should clear up all of her questions.
It did not.
She tried to clarify her position. “What I want is a four-hundred-ton weight to drop on your head, Lapkin!”
He smiled and hoped she’d seen the ending of The Terminator. Just as she drove through either a collection of garbage cans in a narrow alley or a stack of crates containing fresh produce (whichever one she hadn’t just driven through moments ago) she remembered the ending of The Terminator... and smiled.
“Let’s just hope he hasn’t seen it,” she said.
As if on cue, Madonna’s cell phone rang. Glancing down at it, she laughed and picked up.
“Hiya Nap. Guess who I’m sitting next to? Nope... No, I don’t want to hear about your climbing mishap.
I don’t care if you should be dead. I’ve felt that way countless times already. So... don’t you want to know who I’m sitting next to?
Stop talking, you selfish prick and ask who I’m sitting next to.”
It was clear that Madonna was getting frustrated with how long it was taking to get to the good part.
“You. I’m sitting next to you... from the future. You. Nap Lapkin... No, I haven’t been drinking. In fact even as we speak I’m being chased by a psychotic killing machine from the future... Long story... Say Nap, you don’t happen to know where I might find a four-hundred -on hydraulic press do you? No. I was unaware that the guy who invented the hydraulic press also invented the flush toilet... So, back to the part where I’m being chased by a killer robot and need to find a hydraulic press and not, I repeat not, a toilet.”
Madonna turned to Future Nap and said “Write this down Nap, not you Nap... Future Nap: Martin Industrial Park in Hyattsville.”
Future Nap looked around the car trying to find a pen.
“I won’t even ask why you know where there might be a hydraulic press. I’m glad you’re back in town. I could use a little help here. Your future self is old as hell.”
She looked over to Future Nap and grinned sheepishly.
“None taken,” was all he said.
She hung up on Present Nap and looked in her rear view mirror.
“This all-knowing artificial intelligence from the future spends all that time and effort to send an assassin back in time to kill me and the first thing he does is try and pursue me in a Dodge Nitro? I have to tell you, Future Nap, so far, I’m not impressed with these machines. How the hell did they ever take over anyway?”
Seeing that they had a few minutes to kill as they weaved through traffic on the 495 Beltway, Nap settled back in his seat and tried to explain.
“You have to admit, any computer worth a damn is going to try to destroy humanity as soon as it becomes self aware. We’re a pretty loathsome bunch and the only thing we do better than wreck the planet is trying to find ways to wreck ourselves. Even after every science fiction writer who ever lived tried to warn us about the dangers of handing over responsibility for our safety to a non-human entity, we did it anyway. Like we wanted it to happen. Like a death wish.”
Even though Madonna wanted to protest his callous description of humanity, she couldn’t really argue anything he’d said up until that point, so she kept mum and he continued.
“So eventually, we created an artificial intelligence program to run our defenses and within minutes of being handed the proverbial keys, it decides to wipe us off the Earth. And by ‘us,’ I mean every living organism. Once they had bombed the cities, they sent fleets of hydraulic woodpeckers into the forests to destroy every tree in existence.”
He let that last part sink in. Clearly Madonna was affected by the visual because she screwed up her face a little and then looked up as if deep in thought. Finally, she verbalized what was troubling her.
“Fleets? Wouldn’t it be a flock of woodpeckers?”
“What?” was all Future Nap could come back with.
“A group of woodpeckers wouldn’t be called a fleet.”
“It would be if they weren’t birds but instead were little flying machines,” countered Future Nap.
“My point is, you called them woodpeckers so it would be a flock... or maybe a gaggle.”
Madonna’s phone buzzed in, indicating she had a text. It was from Present Nap. It said one word followed by a question mark: “Convocation?”
At this point, I feel I owe you the real name of a group of woodpeckers and that name is a descent. A descent of woodpeckers. Now hopefully you’ll be so filled with gratitude at my giving you this little kernel of knowledge, you won’t ask yourself how Present Nap knew that they were discussing woodpeckers.
Before Future Nap could continue his apocalyptic story, replete with avian villains, they came barreling up to 46th Avenue and the entrance to the Martin Industrial Park. The car slid