Team Free Does Something

On the Outside

Pinman was rather new to the landscape of Team FREE and did not immediately recognize the palace. It did look like much of a palace and certainly much less than Pinman expected.

He walked up the steps and saw two figures next to the building. The one on the left wore a shapeless black hat with a wide brim, had a poncho that may have been red some time in the past but was now just a dirty brown slung over his left shoulder, some kind of animal skin vest, faded long sleeve shirt, well worn jeans and holstered gun on his right hip, where his right hand, very much free of the poncho, lightly touched the weapon. He was standing away from the building, the thin cigar, as yet unlit, hanging from the corner of his mouth and almost lost in the brownish short beard.

His eyes swept over Pinman and looked away, squinting off into the distance, but he kept an eye on the newcomer just the same. He said nothing as Pinman approached.

Pinman did not know quite what to make of the man on his left. The man on the right looked similar to the one on the right, but not exactly the same. He was about the same height but was clean shaven. He wore slacks, a shirt with a tie and a pullover V-neck sweater and a unbuttoned sports jacket. He had no hat.

Pinman said to the man on his right, ‘I thought this was a no smoking zone.’

‘Well,’ was the rather slow reply, ‘he’s not smoking it yet; just getting ready to. Plus, he’s more concerned about lead poisoning than lung cancer.’

‘Lead poisoning? Our water is not contaminated.’

‘Not lead you drink; lead you eat.’

‘But who would –‘

‘Here, let me show you.’ And reaching inside his coat he pulled out a handgun, the largest that Pinman had ever seen. And he began talking down to Pinman. ‘This kind of lead poisoning. But being that this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Lucky enough to ask him to put away his cigar?’

‘Uh, no, not that lucky,’ as his eyes darted back and forth from the gun to the silent man.

‘Smart’, said the silent man.

‘You’re Pinman, right?’ said the better dressed man. ‘You had better get inside. They're expecting you.’

‘Y-yes, I am Pinman. Who are you?’

‘Callahan. Inspector Harry Callahan. And he,’ nodding at the man in the poncho, ‘doesn’t really have a name but is sometimes known as ‘Blondie.’

‘Blondie? Who would –‘

‘You don’t want to know,’ said Blondie.

Somehow the inside was better than the outside. The air was cool, the lights were electric and the walls were even paneled. And there was someone here to met him.

‘Ah, you must be Pinman. Welcome to Team FREE. I’m CommandoBob and you’re the last one to arrive and we need to get started quickly,’ said the average looking, slightly pudgy man in glasses. ‘The sooner we get started the sooner this will all be over. Come, this way.

‘As you know,’ lectured CommandoBob, ‘since we just built Sun Tzu’s Art of War we have decided to replace our current palace guards with new ones. You met them on the way in. They’ve protected us for many years, but they’re ready to do something else. Harry took care of us when we were in the cities, and his alter-ego protected us out in the wild. But, all good things come to an end and so we must part ways.

‘So tonight is the big night. Everyone has their wishes for the next palace guard and so we have gathered to discuss them. Are you ready with yours?’

‘Well, yes, but –‘ began Pinman.

‘Good, then. Here we are.’

They had entered into a large room full of electronic equipment. Some Pinman could recognize; computer monitors, keyboards and soldering guns. Others looked liked a nightmare of blinking lights, switches and cables, with loops of cabling hanging from the ceiling and snaking all over the floor. The place stank of overheated metal, spilled coffee and stale junk food. Parts of the floor were sticky. One wall was made of glass and overlooked a large pit.

‘Where did you get this stuff,’ asked a stunned Pinman. To him it looked like electronic trash.

‘Two hackers named Morpheus and Neo traded all this stuff, and a lot more you can’t see here, for a song. I thought they were crazy but the deal was too good to pass up.’

‘So how much did it cost?’

‘They just wanted a song. One song. Are you familiar with Puberty Love? For some reason I had the sheet music to it and they traded this geek’s paradise for one tacky little song. Make that a song and a tomato; I forgot about it. They wanted to sing that song at a birthday party for someone named Elrond. I didn’t really understand all of what they wanted; they were strange.

Oh! thought Pinman, they’re strange?

‘Okay, we’ve got to get you wired in. Empiremaker, Kuningas and Elephantium have already done this and they’re relaxing in the next room. You and I are the only ones left. So sit here and let’s get started.’

As he was adjusting the piece of equipment, which looked like a hard hat with a lot of wire attached, he kept talking.

‘I fiddled around with the stuff I got from Morpheus and Neo. I tinkered with the code, added some enhancements with Haskell, Java and Natural, compiled it all into, uh, either Visual Basic or HTML, I forget which and then rebooted the whole kit and kaboodle. And it has worked fine ever since.’

‘Ever since when?’ asked Pinman.

‘Uh, yesterday; but it was early yesterday. Going on 36 hours now without crashing.

‘Okay, this part will only take a few seconds. We’ll both go at the same time. It will seem to take hours but the elapsed time is just about 45 seconds. This gizmo will put you into REM sleep and then the program will do its stuff. The start and stop are automatic, but I’ll have a dead-man switch in case something goes wrong. Are you thinking about the new palace guards? Good, so am I. Here goes,’ and he punched the big red start button.

For the next few seconds Pinman and CommandoBob’s hands jerked around slightly. Then they stopped and their eyes began moving rapidly; up, down, left to right, changing focus; reflecting whatever was going on inside their skulls. This stopped and the twitching resumed. Briefly their hands shook and then the hats were removed.

‘Wow, that was some dream,’ said Pinman. ‘Was all of that necessary?’

‘Yes. The classroom setting was deemed by the “experts” to be the easiest way to extract the information, but I never thought it would involve so much writing. My penmanship is horrid; I just hope the routines can correctly decipher what I tried to write.

‘Well, are you ready for the last phase of this?’

‘Maybe. What is it?’

‘Let me show you. It’s easier that way.’

CommandoBob and Pinman left the room on the far side and entered into a break area where three males were watching bizarre Japanese game show competitions.

CommandoBob got a cup of coffee while Pinman raided the soda machine.

After the last wild event, involving otherwise normal people running around costumed as large hands and flopping to the ground, CommandoBob turned off the lights. ‘And now the moment we’ve been waiting for.’

As he lead them, he kept us his usual flow of non-stop commentary. ‘I don’t know what order our selections will be presented in; that is totally random. And don’t ask me to explain how this stuff works; I don’t know. I tried to figure it out once and all I got was a headache. As best I understand it, the computer takes what we gave it and makes it into a somewhat living hologram. That’s not a good description but it is the best I can do.

‘But now that we are in the balcony overlooking the pit, we can begin. And once we get seated, Elephantium, can I get you to push the button, Max.’

‘Uh, sure, I see it, a big blue button with the word Max on it. Ready? Pushing…now!’

The lights dimmed and in the pit before them now stood the two men that guarded the outside of the palace. On monitors in front of them the men saw these images:




‘Behold!’ boomed a voice. ‘What was and what is.’

Out of the side of his mouth CommandoBob said, ‘Uh, guys, I meant to warn you. This AI routine thinks it is the Great Meleet, which in turn has led it to become pompus and boring. Just endure it.’

Below them they saw both aim and fire their guns at unknown targets. Blondie said nothing, but Harry was more talkative. Clearly they heard phrases such as ‘Go ahead, make my day’, ‘I know what you’re thinking’ and ‘Well, do ya, punk?’ They finished their actions and faded away.

‘Behold!’ boomed the voice ‘What could be. Thus…’



A group of men in black pants and brightly colored solid color shirts appeared. Blue and gold were the main colors, with some red also.

‘Those are my guys,’ said Empiremaker.

‘But they’re from the 60’s!’ protested Elephantium.

‘Or thus…’



In a separate section a group of men appeared in full combat dress. They had a crooked cross as their insignia and whatever they were attacking was soon demolished.

‘My grandpa fought at Bastonge and he told me how good these guys were even in their last days. My vote is for them,’ said Elephantium.

‘Or thusly…’




A horde of short blue skin creatures appeared, hopping and skipping and talking in rather high pitched voices. And then they began to sing.

‘Smurkz?’ cried Pinman.

‘No, they’re not Smurkz; Smurkz are green and rather onery,’ said CommandoBob. ‘These things are disgusting and making my hypoglycemia to act up. I may faint.’

‘Well,’ said Kuningas, ‘at least we have a lot of these to choice from.’

‘Or even thusly…’



A tall man, clad in black padding and plastic appeared, with glowing red wand that appeared to cut through things. He had on a helmet that completely covered his face. His cape was black, too.

‘Now that’s my kind of guard,’ breathed Pinman.

‘Or perhaps even thusly and so…’



Two people giving speeches appeared, a man and a woman. The man was military and stood before a large banner of red and white stripes and spoke directly to the unseen people in front of him. He mentioned something about crap through a goose. The woman was not as exuberant in her gestures and seemed a little stiff. She talked about $5,000 for a baby.

The four men looked at CommandoBob, each with a quizzical expression on their face.

‘I was out of ideas, it’s almost Halloween and she is sorta scary’

‘And the chosen one is…’ boomed the deep voice.

‘The blue creatures, for overall cuteness.’

‘What!’ screamed the men. ‘Cuteness? Bob, what did you do? How did this happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ stammered Bob, ‘it must have been in the Haskell-Java interface that something didn’t map properly to the XML file. I’ll get it fixed right away and we’ll do this again.’

‘Too late,’ said Kuningas, ‘look.’

Down below the helmeted man with the glowing red wand had begun attacking the silly blue creatures. He was in the midst of them, swinging away. The wand cut through them and sealed any wounds, but some of the body pieces flew onto the army squad. They reacted by turning their machine gun around and firing into the swirling blue mass. They were unable to damage the man in black as his red glowing rod simply deflected the bullets.

Those bullets found their way into the group of men in the gold, blue and red shirts and immediately the ones in red began to fall. The others fired their hand weapons at the black clothed man but these too he was able to deflect. One of these hit the foot of the military man, which shocked him but did no damage. He then pulled out his ivory handled Colt .45 revolver and began picking off the men around the machine gun.

Soon all the blue creatures were dead. The hand weapons of the men in gold and blue shirts were useless and they decide to rush the man in black. The machine gun had fallen silent but those still alive were also approaching the man in black.

In the midst of all this there appeared a bearded man in blue jeans and a western shirt and denim jacket. He got between the man with the red, glowing stick and the men in blue and gold shirts. In short order, with kicks and punches, those men were removed from the fray. The last man he grabbed and threw him into the advancing group of soldiers. As they fell down he completed their destruction.

The military man holstered his weapon and began to applaud. ‘Magnificent’, he said. ‘Just magnificent. I want to fight for you!’ The new man just nodded his head. He then removed his jacket and tossed it to the military man.

The caped man was breathing heavily, his rod still glowing and twitching. The woman, ignored up until now, began to laugh a very unpleasant laugh. The large helmeted head turned towards her and threw his weapon at her. She tried to move but was unable and then the laughter stopped.

The new man stared up at the man in black, who had somehow regained his weapon. Even so, he hesitated.

‘The force is strong with this one…’ he began and then started his attack, swinging the glowing red wand like a sword.

But unlike before, this time it did no damage. Instead of cutting and searing flesh, it was blocked by the bare left forearm of the bearded man. He, in turn, grabbed the wrist of his assailant with his right hand and forced the man to the ground. Once on the ground, he released his wrist hold and kicked the man between the legs with such force that his helmet flew off. The bearded man now bent over and disarmed his unmoving foe.

He now looked up out of the pit.

‘CommandoBob, do you know who I am?’

Up above, Bob shattered a pane of glass in order to answer.

‘Is it true that you sued NBC for trademark infringement because your legs were named Law and Order?’

The bearded man just smiled, laughed to himself and shook his head.

‘I would be honored to serve as guard to the palace of the FREE,’ he said.

‘And we would be honored to have you,’ replied Bob.

‘Gentlemen, let us meet our new palace guard, shall we?’

‘But who is he?’ asked Pinman.

‘He’s the one the Boogeyman fears,’ said Empiremaker.

‘He can lead a horse to water and make it drink,’ added Kuningas.

‘He can slam a revolving door,’ threw in Elephantium.

‘Are you ready to meet him?’

CB, I've missed your stories!

Behold the power of Haskell made flesh.

Great stuff!

Drugs.

Yes, I'm quite sure that's the only plausible explanation for large parts of that story.

Lots and lots of drugs.


Very entertaining!

Did you know… there is no chin under Chuck Norris' Beard. There is only another fist.

Team Free Does Something

Click to expand...

What did Team Free do?

Not that I'm complaining, any place that has Darth Vader offing Hilly has got to be a Good Thing.

Marsden said:

What did Team Free do?

Click to expand...

CommandoBob said:

‘As you know,’ lectured CommandoBob, ‘since we just built Sun Tzu’s Art of War...

Click to expand...

I assume this was the point of the story, though I guess the message that they have ole Chuck guarding their palace now is also rather frightening.

What did they do??? They got Chuck Norris to avenge the destruction of the Smurfs! Do you think he knows he avenged the Smurfs?

Chuck Norris avenge the Smurfs?



(I might as well :suicide: right now and save Chuck the trouble of tracking me down!)

No, it was a



death match elimination/submission.

You mean like these ?: Grudge Matches