"Recall" - Part Two

 

Part Two

            Cara wasn’t sure what to think of seeing Douglas in such a disturbing scene. She was worried about Gumball and Darwin being exposed to it themselves; their mouths were agape and eyes enlarged in typical cartoon fashion, yet somehow neither seemed quite as terrified as she imagined. It was almost as if the boys had seen worse before. Regardless, Quaid was the man they needed to find – according to the video message.

            “C’mon,” Cara urged them.

            “Hold up!” Gumball protested. “You want to go to the guy who just annihilated four dudes with his bare hands?!”

            “We need Quaid to help us understand what happened to our memories!” Cara reminded him. “But you’re welcome to stay here while I’ll talk to him.” She actually preferred it that way, for the boys’ sakes.

            She was on her way towards Quaid before the world around her suddenly slowed down and then came to a complete stop. Only her and the Watterson boys were still moving in regular time…them and two individuals that appeared across from them. Both of them Cara recognized, just as they recognized her.

            One was a tall, skinny young man with short, dark curly hair, thin cupid’s bow lips, high cheekbones, smooth complexion, and the deepest smoky green eyes. He also had a powerful Romanesque nose, a strong jawline, slightly angular chin, and eyebrows that were thick without being bushy, grown halfway into arches. He strongly resembled the Irish actor Robert Sheenan but, to Cara’s eyes, he was a perfect clone of Andrew Garfield.

            As far as the incredibly attractive woman who accompanied him, she was slightly younger with a curvy, tanned athletic figure. Her hair was shoulder-length and hazel-colored, and it had a bounce to it as she moved, like how it did as she approached Cara and the boys. She appeared to be of Castilian heritage from her genetic makeup. By celebrity comparison, Cara was often told how identical she was to the Spanish actress Ivana Baquero, but at the moment, she was an exact twin of the Cuban/Spanish actress Ana de Armas (particularly in the case of her alter-ego).

            “Who’re those people?” Darwin inquired of the only other two people still moving at regular speed.

            “Al Squires and Norah Navarro of the Protectorate agency,” Cara identified them with a hopeful smile. “Things will make a whole lot more sense now that they’re on the scene.”

            Al and Norah waved and smiled as they were just a few (subjective) feet from Cara and the boys. However, just as they got closer, that hopeful smile on Cara’s face quickly fell upon disturbance. She recalled noticing a gun in the suitcase that was literally dropped off at her feet earlier. Reaching inside the case, she retrieved that gun and pointed it directly at Al and Norah.

            “Whoa!” Al exclaimed, as he and Norah were stopped in their tracks and forced to hold their hands up. “Is that any way to greet old/new friends?”

            “That depends,” Cara told him. “Tell me something only the real Al Squires would say!”

            Al and Norah exchanged a flinching glance. “What?!”

            “It’s been a weird day, dude,” Gumball said. “Just say something.”

            Al shrugged and said, “I feel out of my depth right now, having my story told in third-person perspective for once.”

            Norah shook her head in disgust.

            Cara, on the other hand, was satisfied enough to lower her weapon.

            “What? Just like that?” the baffled Gumball questioned. “All he said was a bunch of nonsense!”

            “And that’s Al Squires in a nutshell,” Cara winked.

            “If we’re done with the Watergate reenactment,” Al began, “maybe you’d care to explain why you brought us here.”

            Cara frowned. “I brought you two here?!”

            “Yes,” Norah supported Al’s claim. “You sent us a video message.”

            Gumball gasped. “Just like the one we got!”

            “Did yours also mention Douglas Quaid?” Cara asked. “Because I need to speak with him right now, but I can’t do that while we’re in the Still.”

            “The still what?” Darwin asked.

            “No, the Still,” Cara repeated.

            “Yeah…the still what?” Gumball repeated his brother’s inquiry. “You never finished the sentence.”

            Al chuckled at what felt like the start of an Abbott and Costello routine. “No, she means ‘The Still.’ It’s for people In-The-Know to move around a universe not In-The-Know covertly – and safely, if they can’t blend in. We call it ‘The Still’ because of how everything and everyone freezes all around you. You three entered it when I activated the device around you and us.”

            Understanding, Gumball looked to where Quaid was still standing, frozen in time with the same look of shock and fear on his face, as he stood over the men that he killed. “Ohhh! That’s why everything around us stopped! We’re in, like, a time bubble!” He approached what he figured to be the border of the Still, about to curiously stick his hand through it.

            “I wouldn’t do that actually, Gumball,” Al stopped him. “The severe dilation between time intervals might rapidly age your hand to the point that it’s rendered to ash. Whether that’s established as canon or not in our world, depends on our writer.”

            Gumball immediately backed away from the border, upon hearing Al’s warning.

            Her eyes locked intently on the Watterson boys, Norah leaned in close to Al and asked, “Are they Absurdites?”

            Al shook his head. “Nope. Just because Absurdites are the basis for cartoon characters, Norah, doesn’t mean that all cartoon characters in the multiverse are Absurdites.”

            “Cut me some slack,” Norah shrugged. “This is my first time in this ‘Infinite DC’ that I read so much about. It’s not like many other places we’ve visited in the omniverse – at least, it doesn’t feel that way.” Her focus moved from the Watterson boys to Cara, and while she still had Al’s attention, she asked, “Should I mention what happened in Studio 54?”

            “Absolutely not,” Al advised. “That hasn’t happened for her yet.”

            “How can you tell? She knows who I am.”

            “Yeah, but remember what she told you: Studio 54 wasn’t the first time she met you. It’s possible you’ve met the incarnations of Neas that’ve come before Cara.”

            Norah could almost feel her head spinning. “It’s going to take a lot more time getting used to all of this.”

            Al playfully nudged her. “Brave heart, Norah. It’s a whole new multiverse.”

            Their private exchange ended once Cara returned to them and asked, “Where is that video message I sent you?”

            “It’s back at HQ,” Al said. “We had it analyzed by Sylvie, which is how we were able to pinpoint the specific realm of the Infinite DC you were in.”

            Cara groaned. “Rekall! I can’t remember why I’d send the Protectorate a video message in the first place!”

            “Something about us coming as an ‘insurance policy’,” Norah said.

            “What is going on?” Cara muttered. “Al, I need to get out of the Still and talk to Quaid now!”

            “Miss Cara!” Darwin suddenly beckoned.

            Cara, Al, and Norah looked to him and Gumball, just as they were rummaging through the suitcase’s other contents, which included money, fake IDs, snacks, a bizarre-looking tool, and yet another video message.

            They watched that video, seeing that it was addressed to Douglas Quaid by a man who looked like Quaid named “Hauser.” It had additional bits of information, such as Hauser formerly working for a corrupt man named Cohaagen – head of the Agency and the planet of Mars – and how there was enough information in Quaid’s mind to shut down Cohaagen’s Mars operation for good. There was also a bug in Quaid’s head that would bring Cohaagen’s operatives, led by a man named Richter, straight to him.

            The message ended with the instruction, “The group of strangers that came to you with this message are gonna help get you to Mars. Trust them, go to the Hilton, and flash the Brubaker I.D. at the desk. That’s it. Just do what I say and we can nail Cohaagen for messing with our heads. I’m counting on you, buddy. Don’t let us down.”

            Listening to the message, Norah realized, “This is the plot to Total Recall!”

            “Remember what I said about Cara’s adventures?” Al recapped for her.

            “Something about them being like fan-fiction,” Norah recollected. “I thought you were just talking your usual nonsense!” She then remembered, “Wait. My memory of the movie may be vague, but wasn’t Hauser still working with Cohaagen in the end?”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” Al confirmed. “That means we can’t trust Quaid.”

            “If what you two are saying is true, then maybe we can change that,” Cara deduced. “In all my adventures in the Infinite DC, the ones that were more familiar to me always turned out differently than in the stories I remembered them from. That could very well be the case here.”

            As the adults were weighing the situation, a deeply confused Gumball turned to Darwin and asked, “Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?” His fish-brother merely shrugged.

            Not a second later did Al take them all out of the Still.

            Quaid, his hands caked with blood, was on his way back to his apartment before Cara and company approached. “Douglas Quaid?” she summoned him, as if she was about to arrest him or hand him a subpoena.

            Halfway up the stairs, Quaid turned and faced the strangers with a perplexed gaze. “Who are you?!” he asked with a thick Austrian accent. “And what’re those mutants doing here?” He gestured specifically to Gumball and Darwin.

            “Well, that’s rude,” Norah defended the boys. “They’re not even Absurdites.”

            “Thank you!” Gumball told her, only to double back and ask, “Wait. What’s an Absurdite?”

            “Look, I don’t know if it seems obvious to you people, but I’m in no mood to talk!” Quaid indicated his bloodied hands and the bodies of the men he killed, sprawled out nearby. “I need to get to my wife, so I can get us out of here!”

            “You mean the ‘Female Terminator’ who fights dirty and is working for the guy who killed Bob Morton?” Al said.

            “What?!” Quaid cringed.

            “Ignore him,” Cara urged Doug. “Listen, we know that Rekall messed with your memories. They did the same thing to me and these two ‘mutants’. I strongly suggest that you come with us, so we can—”

            All of the sudden, a hail of gunfire sprayed in their general direction.

            Richter and the other Cohaagen operatives had found them.

            Fortunately, none of them were hit, but they quickly fled from the area before their luck ran out. They came upon a waiting Johnny Cab that Quaid wasted no time in ripping the robot driver out of, opting to drive the cab himself, taking them to the construction site where he worked during the day.

            “Oh, no!” Darwin cried, holding the videodisc case that contained the message for Quaid. There was a bullet hole along one side of it, fresh smoke seeping out from it.

            “Well, that’s not good,” Gumball noted. “Maybe it still works.”

            They opened the case and tried to watch the video again. Unfortunately, the only part of it that survived was Hauser saying in a glitchy, static replay, “Get you to Mars.”

            “Mars?!” Quaid overheard. “What is this all about? And why does that man in the video look like me?”

            Remembering one vital detail from the video, Gumball snatched that bizarre tool he and Darwin retrieved from the suitcase and approached Quaid with it. “We’ll explain later! Right now, we gotta get that bug out of your head!”

            “Bug?” Quaid reacted, but Gumball offered no elaboration.

            Instead, he impulsively shoved the tool up Quaid’s left nostril, generating a sickening crunch as he had done so. Quaid protested with obscenities, but by then, he already felt the tool drilling into his skull.

            “Ohhh! This is wayyyy grosser than I imagined it would be!” Gumball retched.

            Cara, Al, Norah, and Darwin recoiled at the sight of the golf ball-sized bug extracted through Quaid’s nostril, stretching it to discomforting proportions, until it was finally out of his head. “Got it!” Gumball cheered.

            “DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!” Quaid roared to the blue cat-boy.

            Cara snatched the puss-covered bug from the tool and threw it to the ground, smashing it with a concrete block. “That ought to take us off Richter’s scent,” she said.

            “Is someone gonna tell me what’s going on?” Quaid beseeched. “Or am I gonna have more things stuffed up my nose?!”

            “We’ll explain on the way to the closest shuttle we can take to Mars, Mr. Quaid,” Cara reassured. “We could get there a lot quicker in my TARDIS, but I can’t seem to remember where it is, at the moment.”

            As Cara led Quaid and the Watterson boys back to the Johnny Cab, Norah pulled Al aside for another private exchange.

            “I know that Quaid isn’t really Arnold Schwarzenegger – he’s just a ParaSelf,” she professed. “But I can’t help but feel flustered, confused, and starstruck around him. It’s taking everything in me not to let you-know-who out, just so she can have her way with him, during an important assignment!”

            Al did notice how Norah’s eyes smoked whenever she was around Quaid.

            “I get ya,” Al sympathized. “You know, it’s ironic how the Para-Selves of so many actors are just actually versions of the roles they play. Take Richter, for example, he’s a ParaSelf of Michael Ironside and one of many bad guys he’s portrayed. If you ask me, the man’s been type-casted and deserves more than Starship Troopers and V to break the curse!”