The Segway Chapter

Jack Spicer had the whole world convinced that they were being ruled by some middle-aged guy who looked strangely like Orwell's Big Brother poster. With that little stroke of genius, the real Jack was free to walk about any city or town in the world without fear of being assassinated. He probably could have gone on a tour of the White House, but one of his JackSMARTS had flattened a whole half of it during his World Domination Tour a few years back. The rumor was that the president woke up the next morning- he apparently slept like a log- to a scenic view of the rest of the capitol.

So, one fine day in July, Jack went out to a beach in Sydney, Australia to relax on the sand. His hyper-active cohort, Meg Kake, was there too, only she had dared to venture into the water. She passed him just as he was kneeling down to set up his beach chair.

"I wouldn't go in there, Meg!" Jack called to her as she dashed towards the water with a pokadot inner tube around her waist.

"But the water is so clear!" Meg cried out, "and, there's no one here!"

"Yeah, that's partly what I'm worried about," Jack called back, and then added with a content sigh, "and partly why we're here!"

Jack was still ten shades whiter than chalk, so the spf 5,000,000 suntan lotion was not in any way an unnecessary precaution. Without his shirt, he was liable to light on fire at the beach.

Despite all the wisdom of giant orange and black warning signs on every beach in Australia, Meg still splashed about in her usual carefree manner. She was now sixteen and Jack was twenty-three, but neither had changed too drastically in the last four years. Meg's dreadlocks were longer and she was physically more mature- physically- and Jack was still lean as a rail, but much more experienced in matters such a politics, business, and how to order in bulk quantity.

"Come on in, Jack! The water's great!" Meg called out, getting ready to dunk her head in the water.

"Sure," Jack called back sarcastically, "just let me get my Bluebottle vaccination kit, shark cage, and harpoon gun!"

"You left the harpoon gun in your parent's garage!" Meg reminded him. Without waiting for a reply, she dove forward- still wearing the inner tube- and plunged under the water. She did a full somersault by accident, and when she came up again her dreadlocks were beyond soaked. They were saturated.

"Hey, check it out, Jack! My hair is bloating!"

The dreadlocks were practically sucking up water like so many hoses, and within moments Meg was too top-heavy to sit up straight.

Upside down she went, still stuck in the inner tube.

Jack stuck a straw into a juice box and reclined in his beach chair to watch the show.

Meg kicked her legs around for a few moments and, eventually, with much flailing, she drifted upright like a buoy for a breath of air. There was a little pink and blue moon jelly stuck on her head.

"You'll never believe what's down there!" she screamed with a laugh a split second before she flipped upside down again. The whole process repeated, and when she came up again, she had a disturbingly large- football sized, let's say- crab lodge in her hair. It looked like the crab had eaten the jelly. The third time, there was a toothy fish clamed on, having apparently eaten the crab.

"If this keeps going," Jack muttered, "something's bound to eat her eventually. Maybe a giant saltwater crocodile."

The fourth time Meg flipped upright, the fish was still there, but she staying above the surface long enough to attract the attention of an over-sized sea bird, which swooped in to grab the fish. The fish was stubborn though (it MAY have been an eel), and the bird ended up dragging Meg about thirty feet down the shore before ripping the fish/eel thing away and leaving Meg to massage a sort spot on her scalp.

"As entertaining as ever, Meg!" Jack called down to her. He had to cup one hand over his mouth just to get his voice to carry over the sound of the surf.

"Oh, shut up!" Meg snapped. She reached into her hair and yanked out another passenger. She ran towards Jack at Mach 2, dropped the crab in Jack's lap, and then disappeared.

"Whoa!" Jack cried out, jumping to his feet and dropping his juice box. The crab was about the size of a baseball, with one big claw and one regular sized one. "Do you realized how much damage that thing could have done?" Jack screamed after Meg as she skipped down the beach.

In the moments Jack spent yelling a few more things at Meg, the crab noticed Jack's fallen juice box. Whether by some ancient instinct or a recently evolved sense of humor, the crab snatched up the box and went scuttling, sideways, down the beach in the opposite direction as Meg.

"Hey! Come back here you uncooked side dish!"

If there's one thing you don't learn from growing up in central rural China, it's how to run on soft sand. Crabs can move alarmingly fast down a beach, whereas Jack Spicers are a little less nimble.

"Give me back my juice box ya little shit!"

Leaving Meg far behind, Jack ran down the beach after that crazy crab. He couldn't understand why he was so determined to catch the thing- the juice box wasn't exactly important. Maybe it had just been so long since he'd lost that he could not accept anything other than success.

But, at the same time, there was something drawing him along other than the crab and juice box. He had noticed when he and Meg first got to the beach a strange yearning to go sprinting up the sand until he reached the distant docks. It was like some strange instinct or premonition was drawing him on, pushing the aches and pains of running on sand to the back of his mind.

Eventually, the crab went sideways and ran under the tall wooden docks, exposed by the low tide. The sand was compact down there, so Jack caught the crab in a matter of seconds. He snatched up the juice box and, using more force than he intended to, kicked the crab not only into the ocean but sent it skipping a few times over the waves.

"So long, sucker," he muttered under his breath, pushing the straw up and down in the box a few times and turning to leave. Just as he turned, though, he dropped the juice box in disbelief.

Just around the bend of the beach, somewhat hidden in a remote bay, was a giant ship. Giant. It was easily the size of a cruise liner, but it barely looked like one.

"What the hell is that?" Jack whispered under his breath, squatting down to pick up his juice box. In all the time he had been running down the beach, he had never noticed the huge thing docked practically in front of him. It was like it had just appeared. "It looks like Howl's Moving Castle…only in the shape of an ocean liner."

Between his incredible new JackBots and boundless new technology, Jack Spicer wasn't easily impressed. But, there was something about that ship that seemed…unnatural.

Suddenly he noticed footsteps over head. The sun came through the docks in long slits, and Jack could see who stood where by the way the light was cut.

"Major! Where have you been?" a male voice asked. "I've been looking all over for you! I thought you said…"

"I said the high 7 dock," replied a deep, authoritative voice, apparently Major.

"Yeah, and I was here earlier…"

"Earlier? When it was the low 7 dock? I swear I explained this to you! At low tide, the docks are high, and visa versa!"

"Oh…I guess I was here at high tide…" the first voice said so quietly that Jack could barely hear him.

"Just forget it. You're here now, so what did you find on that lead?"

"Spicer?"

Jack was suddenly intrigued. What lead? Who were these men?

"Nothing," the first man continued. "There was just some red haired guy with either his spastic girl friend or his little sister. No sign of Spicer."

"Damn it," Major snapped. "How does this keep happening?" He turned and paced slowly down the dock, right over Jack's head. "The information we have should logically lead us to that bastard, but…"

There was a long silence, during which Jack didn't dare move an inch on the rough, grinding sand. Then, eventually, the first man spoke up.

"Is it really necessary?" he asked tentatively. "I mean, do we have to kill him? Wouldn't we just lose control over all his robots and make things even worse?"

"Minor," Major said, turning around and walking back slowly, "there's nothing else to do other than kill him. No one ever questioned killing Hitler! If Jack Spicer is allowed to live, there's no telling how bad things could get. Sure, life isn't too much different now, aside that we're minus a few national landmarks, but just wait a few more years. Once people are too accustomed to Spicer's rule, it will only be that much more difficult to rebel! Not only do we have to wipe him out, we have to wipe out all his robots and everything he's created!"

"Uh…I still think this is going to lead to an uncontrolled international outbreak of free-for-all war, plague, and starvation," Minor muttered. "At least, if we can't find a way to control everyone after Spicer is gone…"

Suddenly there was a deep, rumbling vibration that seemed to come from Major. Jack saw the boards of the dock quiver as the sound shot into Minor and knocked him off his feet.

"Ow, Major! What was that for?"

"That was just to remind you that there's no room for doubt within the Circle of Fifths," Major snapped in his baritone, imposing voice. "If you want out, then leave! But, don't think Silence will just forget you…"

"I'm not leaving," Minor murmured, letting Major give him a hand up. "I…I trust Silence. He knows what he's doing."

"Damn straight he does. Now, come on. We still have to keep one step ahead of Spicer, and his satellite should be passing over this area soon."

With that, Major and Minor trotted down the dock and returned to land. Jack ducked behind the shadow of a dock post as they headed along the ledge of land towards the strange ship. Keeping his head low, and the juice box still in the corner of his mouth, Jack ran under the docks until the bay curved in and the docks came to an end. Kneeling next to a post, he had an almost head-on view of the ship and all its mismatched glory.

He then saw Major and Minor for the first time. Minor was tall and lean, with spiky blonde hair and the sort of expression that suggested he wasn't exactly present. Major was short and square, but built like a brick wall, with dark hair, dark features, and a no-nonsense look to him. Minor was wearing almost all blue and white while Major wore black and green.

Then, something strange happened. With Major in the lead, the two men stepped right off the edge of the land and walked across open air. Jack could see the atmosphere beneath them bending and shimmering like a heat illusion. Then, a split second after they stepped off solid ground, a perfect note resonated in the air and almost knocked Jack off his feet.

Not exactly a music expert, there was no way Jack could identify the note, but he had a feeling that there was something special about that one sound.

After a moment, the two men were aboard the strange ship and they vanished through a door. About a minute after that, a jet of steam shot out from a main smoke stack, but it was totally silent. Then, with smaller shots of steam erupting from random places about the ship, it slowly began to drift forward- without a sound. The waves even fell silent. The ship moved out of the bay at an amazing rate for something so massive. As it passed Jack, he read the name painted on the side in a way designed to imitate letters cut from different magazine pages.

"Down An Octave," he read to himself quietly.

In just a few moments, the ship was out into open water, and then it dove. In less than minute, the ship vanished under the ocean in total stealth, leaving only some white waves behind.

Then, Jack heard seagulls. He heard the ocean. He heard Meg screaming as she ran and jumped into a sand castle she had built while Jack was away. Jack then realized that, the whole time he had been listening in on Major and Minor, the rest of the world had fallen silent.

"Holy crap," Jack muttered as the realization suddenly set in. "They could have killed me. They did find me, they just didn't knowit!" After a moment of cluttered thoughts, Jack took off running back down the beach, this time keeping to the wet, compact sand. He didn't mind getting his feet wet.

"Meg! We gotta get back! There are some freaky people trying to kill me!"

"Lots of people are trying to kill you, Jack," Meg said, piling up some sand, "but they all think they're going after that weird Big Brother guy you came up with."

Jack stopped. He took a deep breath. Meg piled sand around his feet.

"You're right," he said finally. "They don't know what I look like. They don't realize I'm a 23-year-old from China with bright red hair. I'm still safe…That gives me the upper hand. I have to find out who those people are before they find out who I am."

"A good start would be to not describe yourself out loud," Meg said, arranging strips of seaweed over his sand-cased feet to look like sneaker laces.

The story continues in:

Jack Spicer Wants To Save The World