Okay, maybe I could indulge these two a little more.
“Are you alright?” Karla questioned. “It looks like you’re about to pass out.”
“No, no,” I reassured her with a raised hand, “I’m all good. I’m just… thinking it over, that’s all.”
I sat down on the bottom step of the staircase and let out a deep sigh as I hung my head in disbelief.
A quarter of a million dollars… I’d have to be a total idiot to say no at this point.
Best case scenario? They were both complete loons, and I get paid to indulge their insane fantasy.
Worst case scenario? Well, I’d be fighting for my life against a bunch of crazed humans in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
But, even then, that was well worth the quarter of a million dollars.
I raised my head to look at the Nashes and then smiled widely.
“Alright,” I announced. “I’ll do it. But just this once.”
“I knew you’d come around!” Dr. Nash proclaimed. “Welcome to the team, Wayfarer!”
“Yeah,” Karla scoffed, “it only took a massive bribe to get him to agree to save the world. My kind of hero… ”
Oh, well. Miss Nash could be cold toward me all she wanted.
It really didn’t matter.
If all went as planned, I’d be rich in a little over an hour.
Chapter 3
“Alright, here’s the lowdown,” Karla explained as she gestured for me to follow her up the stairs to the main level of the mansion. “We’re sending you into the remnants of Chicago, the spot of a direct nuclear strike. You may know a lot about basic survival techniques, but I doubt you know much about traversing a nuclear wasteland.”
“Actually,” I joked, “I’m pretty sure Les Stroud did a whole episode on that one.”
“Please take this seriously,” Karla grumbled and frowned. “That man is nice enough, but he’d be dead in a week if he ever was seriously put into a life or death situation.”
“If Les Stroud can’t survive it, I don’t know who can,” I admitted.
“You can.” Karla nodded as she opened up the door to a room and nodded inside. “That is, with a little bit of advice and a few specially-made pieces of gear.”
I was now standing inside of what looked like an armory, with dozens of weapons of all kinds hanging on the wall next to tactical suits. There was a wetsuit, chain mail armor, hazmat suits, and even costumes that looked like they were ripped straight out of a Mad Max movie.
These guys really were prepared for everything.
Karla was up on a ladder, and she fumbled around with boxes of gear on the shelves above.
I couldn’t help but glance up and watch her tight ass wiggle as she rummaged. Her pants squeezed her so tightly, they could have been a second skin, but I averted my eyes instantly when Karla came up with a box and then looked down on me.
“You good?” she asked knowingly.
She may have been a bit cold, but she was anything but unobservant. I was sure she knew exactly what I was doing, and I was even more sure she found it amusing.
“All good,” I lied and then pointed to the hazmat suit. “Let me guess, that one’s for me?”
Karla looked over at the bright yellow suit and then back at me. She repeated the action for a solid minute before she finally let out a long sigh.
“That suit in a post-apocalyptic wasteland?” she chuckled. “You’d stick out like a sore thumb. Besides, all of my father’s calculations indicate the virus has run its course in this dimension. I thought you were supposed to be good at this survivalist stuff?”
“Not when I don’t know what I’m getting into,” I grumbled and crossed my arms. “Your dad didn’t exactly give me much to go on other than, ‘there’s radiation and crazed humans.’”
“Unfortunately, that’s all the Roosevelt is capable of predicting,” the brunette explained as she set the box in her hand down on a nearby table. “It can figure out the Doomsday scenario and how to fix it, but not much beyond that.”
“What did you call it?” I raised an eyebrow.
“The Roosevelt,” she repeated. “That’s what my father called- calls the Interdimensional Future Doomsday Radar. You know, ‘IFDR?’”
Suddenly, it dawned on me.
“Ah.” I nodded. “Clever.”
Karla pulled out a simple black t-shirt and a pair of full-length, tan combat pants.
“We found out rather quickly the IFDR can only transport organic matter or very small bits of inorganic matter surrounded by organic,” she explained as she handed me the clothing. “When my father from Dimension Six-Eighty-Seven arrived here via his own machine, he was missing both his pants and his lab coat.”
“So, I’m gonna have to go into the apocalypse completely in the buff?” I mused. “That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Of course not.” The brunette woman rolled her eyes. “My father still had his dress shirt and underwear intact when he arrived. Things like cotton, wool, linen, and silk come from natural fibers, so they are completely fine during the transportation process. Now, something like polyester or rayon? That’d be a no-go.”
I inspected the clothes closely, and they didn’t really seem to be anything special. That was just my luck.
All these badass costumes around, and I’m stuck with the one that makes me look like I should be smoking a cigarette outside my local Walmart while waiting for my wife and six kids to come out of the store.
Karla opened her eyes widely, turned her head, and then nodded.
“Oh?” I was a tad surprised. “You—You want me to change into them right now?”
“Don’t make it weird.” Karla rolled her eyes again. “You’re just stripping down to your underwear. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Is this what she got outta this whole thing? Some sort of strange, exhibitionist excitement?
Whatever.
I quickly slipped off my uniform, tossed it to the side, and then put on the pants and t-shirt.
Karla just stood there with a blank expression on her face the whole time, though I swear I saw her eyes dart down to my bulge for a brief, fleeting moment.
Finally, when I was all dressed, the brunette woman turned around and motioned for me to follow after her. Then she led me over to a giant metal door with a wheel that looked like a ship’s. As Karla turned it counterclockwise, the seal around the door let out a hiss as it was released from the pressure. Within a few seconds, there was a small “pop,” and the door swung open.
“How does this place have so many more rooms?” I pondered aloud as we stepped inside. “Don’t you already have like, eight-thousand square feet to work with upstairs?”
“That’s right,” Karla explained, “but that’s just at the ground level. Our subterranean lab is nearly double that size, and it runs all throughout the neighborhood. In fact, we have secret hatches that come out on at least three of our neighbor’s properties.”
“What exactly would you need to escape from?” I questioned. “You guys have been at this for years, and you haven’t had anybody come after you, right?”
“They haven’t come after us yet,” the brunette clarified. “There is no doubt in my mind there will come a day when they do. Whether it be the government or one of my father’s intellectual rivals, the power of interdimensional travel alone would put massive targets on our backs. And that’s not even getting into the algorithms the IFDR uses to predict the future or the various doomsday events across the various fine ruins. If that got into the wrong hands… well, I don’t even want to think about what would happen then.”
Karla flipped on the lights, and I felt a lump hop up into my throat.
The room was made up completely of concrete from top to bottom. At its center sat what looked to be a large operating table on a horizontal pivot, something like you’d see in an old monster movie. Right next to the table was a cart full of all sorts of small tools, tools whose functions I didn’t even want to think about right now.