The Old Flash Club Archive

The outing to the archive took place as soon as Flashtease next had a morning with no classes or sports lessons scheduled, which Joe supposed would have been the equivalent of a Sunday. Soon after breakfast they set off, the Mini-Flash driving their crimson-coloured interplanetary racer as it was he who knew the way. Flashtease explained that the building they were bound for was now disused, but had still been in service when he was a Flash Club neophyte. Hard as it was to imagine Flashtease looking any sweeter than he did today, his younger self in a beige entry-level tunic and knee-high boots might just have managed it.

Amid these distant constellations there were times Joe missed the palimpsest of memories that Nottingham had become for him, where old and new coexisted in every architectural vista, and upon the span of a single city wall might be superimposed a day not long after the creation of Nottingham and another from the far more recent ill-fated era of the Next Four. Gazing out however on the unfamiliar landscape flitting by as Flashtease drove, it occurred to our hero that what he surveyed must surely function for his companion much as the remembered streets of home did for him. That same smaller Flashtease who had worn the beige tunic was well used to traversing these quiet neighbourhoods of the astro-conurbation, under similar pink skies to the one the weather-generators were at present beaming above them. As Flashtease now rounded a block of low-roofed power-processing buildings, ducked under a tunnel and skimmed across a bridge which spanned a plasma-aqueduct, they were the same landmarks he had negotiated thus on countless trips to the archive when his Mini-Flash career was just beginning. Subsequent experiences involving Planet Earth and The Four Heroes and the Solidity War and Gala will have made those simpler times seem long ago indeed. Young as Flashtease still was, Joe knew this journey already had for him an irrecoverable past, or at any rate one which might be visited only in dreams or recollection. Thus, our hero supposed, did the unchanging streets and skylines that were backdrop to every life come to take on their ever-more-numerous layers of simultaneous meaning.

Flashtease settled the racer down in the parking-lot of his and Joe’s destination. The Mini-Flash had been putting it mildly when he described this venue as “disused.” Indeed, Joe’s greatest concern was that the car might sink in the field of cosmic mud which here was what served for ground. They were a long way from the glittering pavements at the conurbation’s core where today’s Flash Club Headquarters was situated. Here, glooming strongholds and storehouses in various states of disrepair were quite literally lopsided, as the all-pervasive goo slowly proceeded to claim their corners year by year. The largest of these semi-submerged edifices, and for the time being the most upright, Joe took to be the old Flash Club archive.

“Hope you don’t mind getting your feet dirty,” Flashtease grinned to him.

Joe however was smiling too. If the secrets they sought were indeed here, then this neglect and dereliction could not have been better news. It was obvious the archive no longer saw many guests.

Together they waded through sucking swampland to the marginally firmer floor of a cement entryway. The door was standing wide open and the security booth dusty and deserted, which given Joe’s present relations with The Flash Club was one less thing to worry about. Flashtease led on with customary enthusiasm, scampering up the stairs always one flight ahead of Joe, because it was no use any Earthling trying to explain to Mini-Flashes the short skirt etiquette that applied back home. Our hero was still making up his mind as to whether it was a good or bad thing that their workspace for the day should be elevated to quite such a height over the unsteady bog on which it sat, when Flashtease’s glimmer of vivid yellow vanished into an archway above and Joe followed suit to the end of the trail.

It was one enormous room, the ceiling held up by a square pillar or two but no walls save the four outer ones that enclosed it, and Joe’s first bizarre impression was that it was full of miniature model factories. Ranged upon tables and along dizzying stacks of shelves were line after line of what looked like the staggered triangular roofs of industrial districts on Earth, except that there were no tiny brick chimneys to go with them. It took our hero a minute to remember that in this sector the preferred technology for data-storage came in the form of a pyramid-shaped handheld unit, and here outspread before him were more of these than he had ever seen in his life.

Joe could only stare, his amazement rapidly transmuting to glad anticipation. If the galaxy’s lost and forgotten past was going to turn up anywhere, then this looked like the place.

The mighty beings known as Flashes led long lives, but the process by which they grew to adulthood took no longer than it did for humans. For this reason The Flash Club was considerably older than it might on first glance have appeared. Its current leader Storm-Sky and his late friend Lightning conceived of the organization when they were children, but although Storm-Sky still resembled an Earth-man in his prime, the pair of them had seen generations of Mini-Flashes pass in succession through the ranks. Joe had been aware of this, but even so, the old Flash Club archive took him quite by surprise with its revelations on just how far back that body’s existence went.

For hidden within these myriad oft-faded and decrepit pyramidal storage-devices were veritable sagas of the long-ago. Our hero indeed had to frequently remind himself he and Flashtease were searching for one specific piece of information, so diverting were the endless reams of unrelated history. Over the course of bygone ages the Flash Club’s men and boys – because until very recently it had been that gender alone – roamed the farthest reaches of the galaxy in adventures untold. To Joe, this litany of star-spanning expeditions, sporting glories and battlefield heroics soon began to resemble a string of sunny afternoons and weekends and holidays stretching back unto eternity, each epic complete with its own compendious collection of accessories including vehicles and villains, inventions and intrigues, superstars and sacrifices, fantastic feats and notable names, which everyone thought then would live on to the end of time.

Our hero supposed there could not be adventures like these anymore. The dawn of the second gender had made the galaxy an altogether different place, and so too of course had his own personal deeds and misdeeds contributed to the imminent fulfilment of a prophecy somehow bound up with the same, mind-boggling as it remained for Joe to contemplate how through any agency of his own the face of an entire quadrant might be reshaped. Even still, he was dumbfounded and more than a little dismayed that such a treasure-trove as he here beheld should have been to all intents and purposes abandoned by the people whose illustrious heritage it was. Had the galaxy truly changed so much that no-one cared any longer about those wondrous times? A golden age which existed now only as an assortment of deteriorating plastic shells, scattered haphazardly along benches in this sad enclosed space and fated one day to sink evermore into its acre of mud, whereupon the last tatters of a time that had meant so much to so many would be eternally gone.

Once again Joe forced himself to focus on his task. Thus far he had ascertained that the galaxy abounded with twin planets, so Neetra’s description alone did not greatly narrow down the question of which pair had once been called Nereynis and Drenthis. However, our hero was formulating ideas, and presently he turned to his companion who was sitting cross-legged on the floor a little way off sifting through a separate pile of pyramids.

“Flashtease,” said Joe, “please tell me of the First and Final War.”

“I had a feeling you were going to pick one like that,” came back the reply. “A lot of what really happened then, nobody knows. Including where it all took place, by the way. Oh, and as stories go it’s about as devoid of twin planets as anyone could ask!”

But there was a twinkle in the Mini-Flash’s eye, for he knew when his friend was onto something. So Flashtease stood, had a quick untuck, and showed Joe over to where the relevant storage-devices were shelved.

NEXT: 'THE FIRST AND FINAL WAR'