Coda, Chapter Two

Finally a free afternoon came around. It would have been a long way for Joe to walk, so he and Neetra set off together in the latter’s space-car, flanked by Flashtease who was driving Flashshadow in his and Joe’s red racer. She, our hero knew, wanted to see this as much as he himself did.

Croldon Thragg had done a superb job on the bridge. As the two hover-vehicles banked smoothly along its bends, climbing ever higher, Joe from his passenger-side beheld the towers of Nottingham scrolling in a sea of golden cloud. Thus our heroes gained at length the forecourt of the factory, that bulking relic Joe had hauled home as from out of this galaxy’s past, now securely moored to the orbital bedrock on which the city stood.

He and his three companions marched through the entryway and into the workroom. Then Joe and Flashshadow stopped and stared.

The cavernous interior was heaped high. Never had our hero dreamed his first sweep would yield such treasures. There were crates full of those musical toy monsters, some still in their original packaging, old cardboard colours of yesteryear barely faded with age. Characters from the programme unrepresented in the thirty-seven seconds of footage Joe had thus far gleaned were present in plastic form too, and there were posters and promotional booklets galore, even fibre-stock fittings from what must have been display-stands assembled in department stores that bygone festival-cycle. And could those shapes far off towards the rear be actual costumes from the production itself?

Then, arrayed on the conveyor-belts, were pyramidal recording-devices. On sight of their ancient commercial cases Joe and Flashshadow looked to each other, both weak with rapture. So it had been on the shelves, somewhere in the distant reaches of this enormous galaxy. There were soundtrack albums too, and of these our hero knew his student and saviour’s joy was absolute. The shabbiest pyramids meanwhile, unpackaged and labelled by hand, may even have been survivors of the studio floor.

With these, they could…

Realisation was dawning on Joe, planetary and vast. He found his voice.

“We can host another convention,” our hero breathed.

With a full screening as its centrepiece. For surely all of the programme was here, in one state or another. The Wonder-Tool could edit and restore it to a sparkling new master.

“It’ll be the first,” Flashtease agreed with a grin. “The first convention dedicated to…”

And he spoke the programme’s name aloud. For Joe himself could read it now, in several different legible scripts, blazing from every banner and backdrop.

At last, he knew what it had been called.

Joe grasped Neetra and held her to him.

Our hero had no illusions about having confronted everything while within his subconsciousness, content as he was for his recent experiences in that line to suffice. In bed again underneath the dome, his and Sonica’s earliest encounter with Mini-Flash Pseudangelos must have been on his mind, for he mentioned to Neetra his pleasant surprise that they hadn’t heard a peep out of Flashtease that afternoon on the subject of being chauffeured by a girl.

Neetra settled herself in alongside Joe.

“You’ve noticed the new batch who arrived while you were away,” she began, patiently. “All those eager-to-please breathy boys, and gawping little Missies stuffing out their beige?”

Joe had, if only because there was never going to be a Nottingham policy on curtseying as long as he and Neetra kept sending mixed messages. Our hero always explained to the Mini-Flashes there was no need for that custom here, whereas new girls made Neetra competitive. Révérences were returned in kind before she and female neophytes parted company, eyeing one another, each no doubt subjecting their counterpart’s technique to exhaustive analysis.

Merely dwelling on this was almost enough for Joe to forget his wound, but since doing so might have meant a second hospital trip, he lay back and rested instead.

“Well, Flashtease was the first Mini-Flash we ever met,” Neetra went on. “And he was already a senior then. Why do you think they change their names completely when they reach adulthood? I mean, can you imagine one of those huge muscly athletes wanting to be reminded every day he used to behave like Flashtease did when we knew him in Nottingham?”

Our heroine smiled fondly.

“He’s grown up, Joe,” she concluded. “A few of our so-called Minis have been doing that.”

“Two Special Program romances in this city alone,” concurred Joe, “and another who is now the first of that number to have reproduced. Storm-Sky should be informed, for this concerns his people. The difficulty is in determining quite how to broach the subject.”

“Try not to be around Auntie Green when she finds out it happened on your watch,” was Neetra’s advice.

“This does indeed carry with it a danger of renewed Alliance hostilities,” observed Joe resignedly. “While Storm-Sky’s perspective on our cause has ever appeared ambiguous, there will have been some among The Flash Club, Toothfire and even the Grindoes who welcomed the Special Program’s confinement to Headquarters, as a means of deferring numerous unknown quantities including that of courtship.”

“Which is the opposite of our way,” Neetra pointed out. “All that’s going on now is what we foresaw. What the galaxy’s started calling your big discovery.”

Joe tried not to laugh. “It was yours first,” he dutifully acknowledged.

“Yes, it was,” agreed Neetra, and crinkled her little nose at him.

Past the ring of candlelight stretched the Town Hall’s stone-flagged summit, beyond which Nottingham’s rooftops were bathed in nightly Nereynis blue. The Mini-Flashes would grow up, Joe reflected. It was always going to be that way. What was important was that that which they grew up in the name of should stay the same. Neetra’s head was upon our hero’s shoulder once more, reminding him that the last part was up to the pair of them.

“It always ends here for us, doesn’t it?” remarked Neetra comfortably.

She must have read his mind. And she was right. Joe knew by now there were many other places, but here in Nottingham he’d stay.

THE END