The sky was clear, not a cloud in sight, the sun was shining but not fiercely. It was in fact quite a balmy Summer’s day with bees buzzing in and around the flowers that were growing wild and there was a comfortable cool breeze wafting through the air. All was peaceful, serene until the silence and peace was shattered by the sound of “The Ride of the Valkyries”.
Elvis P. Kwerk opened one eye very gingerly as his head felt like it was splitting in two and he wanted to keep at least one part connected to the body. He scanned the immediate area around him which was surprisingly very linear in dimension. He quickly reasoned he was on his back on the ground and his ear was itching which was due to an inquisitive ladybird disembarking from his body having completed her investigation. Slowly Elvis raised himself up on one elbow and perused the scene around him only this time with both eyes as he was by now confident that they were both connected and part of the whole and in tack. Before him lay an idyllic rural scene which only lacked cows and sheep to make it perfect which immediately rang alarm bells in his head. Before he could think any further he became painfully aware of music assaulting his ears. He reached for his phone.
‘Sorry Chief, I got a bit diverted’ He found himself blurting out.
‘Elvis, is that you?’
‘Ah, a trick question,’ he thought, how he hated these especially upon awakening, or at least he thought he was awakening, he wasn’t sure at the moment, not enough data had passed by his little grey cells yet.
‘Elvis, it’s George, we could do it with your help, you and Rosie.’
His mind began to race in every direction, the left lobe to Swansea the right to Cardiff and the front to Benidorm, Benidorm?! Well he was a much travelled individual. Then it struck him and once he recovered from the blow he responded.
‘George, how're you doing, still got that hound with you, what’s his name, oh yeah, Dog?’
‘Where are you right now?’ Asked George in a somewhat brusque manner, Elvis thought.
‘Right now, you say, well I don’t rightly know to be honest. In fact it was your call that woke me up from whatever state I was in which wasn’t sleep, of that I’m almost certain. Anyway, that’s not important, what’s your problem, you obviously have one or you wouldn’t have called, being the ultra-capable person you are?’
‘My friend here has just lost his camp and if you need to know any more I suggest you get your ass here a.s.a.p, it’s urgent, okay, explain when I see you.’
Elvis thought his friend was being more than a bit brusque here but he knew her from, then he suddenly realised that he didn’t quite know just how long he’d known George. What’s going on here? Rosie, where’s Rosie I’d better check with her she’ll know. With this thought running amok through his mind he looked wildly around for the familiar shape of his one-off Red Reliant Robin Super GT & Bar but could not spot her familiar shape anywhere. Panic began to set in, he hadn’t been separated from his car for any length of time, she was his creation, a vital part of himself and suddenly she was nowhere in sight except, out of the corner of his eye a red flash began to appear through matching red eye, it was car shaped and he thought, Rosie, ah! But then when his vision began to clear more he noticed with some alarm that the shape his eyes alighted upon was not the familiar shape of the car he knew but of something entirely different.
He raised himself off the ground and slowly carefully walked towards the vision in red. Why was he being cautious, he thought, after all he expected to see a red car but not this red car for this one had an obvious basic difference to Rosie because this one had FOUR wheels and not three?! This was not all he noted, this one was a different shape altogether. It had more, well more curves and it was slightly bigger, at least it was on the outside, goodness knows what he’d find on the inside but he had to find out. All the time in the back of his mind he was wondering what had happened to his Rosie and as these thoughts were playing across his consciousness he became aware of a growing sadness in there, he was feeling a strange sensation, a feeling of great loss which disturbed him. To his surprise the closer he got the car the less sad he became and he wondered what the hell was going on here? He was merely a foot away from his target when he heard a chirpy all too familiar voice. First his blood ran cold then at almost the same time he felt his heart leap into his mouth, it was the voice he thought he’d never hear again.
‘Rosie, is that you?’ Was all he could think of saying.
‘Expecting someone else then are we?’
Before he could even think what he was doing he threw himself upon the bonnet of the unfamiliar red roadster in front of him and planted kiss after kiss upon the metal, then he stopped and stepped back and feeling just a little foolish he looked at the vehicle before his eyes which has strangely enough a slightly familiar shape to, one he’d seen before but couldn’t remember just where exactly. There was one of those awkward silences that usually only occur between two people where one or neither quite knows what to say next. It was Rosie who broke the silence.
‘It’s all good Skipper, really, no need for concern, it really is me though I do look a bit different I’ll grant you that.’
‘W-what happened to you, what happened to me, w-what happened t-to?’
‘Bit complicated but there is a full report in the usual place though this time it’s easier to reach and you don’t have to worry about cold hands, the new design is more helpful.’
Elvis P. Kwerk was numb, dumb and utterly confused by now and he didn’t like that feeling as he was not in control. In front of him stood what amounted to be, supposedly, his own creation only in a totally different form and this ‘thing’ he’d made was reassuring him, telling him not to be fearful and everything was good when in fact everything wasn’t good in his mind. He wanted answers not readouts, no smart ass gobbledigook from a machine, his creation or no. Elvis, he thought to himself, you had better stop right there, regroup and start again only this time in a calm and logical manner. So, after taking a deep breath.
‘What the hell happened?’ He just couldn’t help himself, it just came out.
‘Climb aboard, Skipper, and make yourself comfortable and I’ll try and explain. Though there are some gaps even in my memory, I’ll do the best I can.’
Elvis opened the driver’s door and sat in what was truly an amazing machine that surprised and stunned even him, who was allegedly responsible for its creation. It was just as he remembered Rosie of old in that the interior was impossibly bigger than the exterior, continuing the in-built capacity to mess with time and space and reality. So far it was as he remembered though maybe there were a few extra buttons and switches he had no prior knowledge of. There was an awful lot to be explained before he could get his brain into some sort of order. In the driver’s compartment it was far more plush than he remembered too which was nice, he thought, again it was red like the exterior.
Rosie began to relate as much information as she was able to retrieve from her computer banks, her storage capacity that seems to have grown within keeping with the change of appearance to the entire machine.
‘I tell you as much as I can, Skipper. We were heading for an appointment with your arch enemy and travelling faster than we had ever travelled before having engaged ‘Protocol Z’. It was most probably at this point when you passed out which is probably best that you did for there were some considerable forces put upon your physiology let alone your mind. We clocked a speed until that time unknown of when everything was turned upside down, inside out and all points west as you yourself might say. I actually felt changes taking place within myself which I thought at the time, ‘the Skipper won’t be happy about this.’
All the time Elvis was sitting open mouthed, wide eyed as he listened and tried to process the information as it was delivered. He was listening to the events which transmogrified his own creation. ‘Not going too fast for you, am I , Skipper?’
He shook his head, absentmindedly, as if in a daze.
‘I’ll take your silence as a no. Well after these initial changes we exited that state of existence and entered another, a state of constantly changing light, colour changes of the rainbow and some not previously known off. Then the air which we were in seemed to implode, pressure built up on itself and collapsed. After what must have been merely seconds there was a blinding flash followed by an almighty explosion and we were left sitting in an area akin to a meadow. That’s about it except that my body seems to have taken on the form of a Citroen C1 circa 2019 or thereabouts, hard to be precise on that one, sorry Skipper. Oh and there are a few modifications too, must have been something you were working on prior to our little adventure for it is none of my doing, that would be impossible now, wouldn’t it, Skipper?’
There was something in this last remark that sounded very much to him like mischief in her voice. Was that possible? Maybe he’d pursue this later, maybe he wouldn’t, something was very different about Rosie and it wasn’t just the outward appearance, no something deeper had occurred but he was too much in shock right now to think about this, he was just glad to be reunited with his beloved Rosie. Even that thought caused him to experience a little twinge of doubt, mystery, what was it, he wasn’t sure?
He found himself a little hesitant in his next move but needed to do it. He gingerly pressed the switch which helpfully said starter underneath it, that’s nice, he thought. There came an almost inaudible rumble then a bang and lots of smoke. Somethings don’t change it seems he thought out loud.
‘Sorry about that, Skipper, I’ve not been running for some time it would seem.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that, Rosie?’
‘Just that I’m a bit cold and need a little warming?’
Was this the same Rosie he’d created? It was becoming increasingly doubtful but how could it not be? Oh there was no time right now for this nonsense, he’d got a call to respond to, he had to go help George. There was that name again, where had he encountered anyone called George, and this George was female adding to his confusion. He thought it was time to jump in at the deep end as it were,
‘Rosie, who is George?’
‘George?! Why, George is George, you know George.’
‘The reason I asked the question was because I didn’t have the answer and I thought that you might just know, now if you are finished playing around.’
‘I do apologise Skipper, you have had a bit of a stressful time of late, especially the last few minutes. Right, we encountered George on our last mission, remember? Sorry, you don’t, right. George is a freedom fighter of sorts, who was abandoned at an early age and had to fend for herself which she has done with some note apparently, from my gossip database that I’
‘Whoa there, ‘gossip database? Alright, don't tell me another unexpected modification, right?’’
‘Just so, now where was I, oh yes, George amassed something of a reputation for ‘getting involved’ if you know what I mean, anyway, she gained great respect from her peers and local community in general with the exception of the less salubrious types who quickly learned to give her a wide berth. She came into our last adventure as it was reaching its climax and was of great help indeed, for some reason she seemed to latch onto you, striking up a bit of a rapport between the two of you’
‘And she has a dog, am I right?’
‘Oh yes, she does have a dog and quite a dog, one not renowned for its overly friendly nature, well, it doesn’t actually make friends easily, let’s say.’
‘What sort of dog are we talking about?’
‘Good question, there seems to be a bit of a mystery here, like the rest of their background. You could say he’s a bit of a cross breed but mostly Labrador and very black.’
Elvis found himself most intrigued by all of this information as much as its source as the information itself. So much detail and delivered in a manner not a bit like the delivery of a machine, he felt a little uneasy still about this aspect of Rosie, she was certainly different and he wasn’t at all sure he was happy about it. But, he had to know as much as he could before he met his supposed ally, George. ‘This dog got a name by any chance?’ he asked.
‘Dog.’
‘Yes, that’s right, the dog, has it got a name?’
‘That’s it, Skipper, its name is simply that, ‘Dog.’
‘Imaginative,’ he thought aloud, not aware he had done so.
‘Well it does cover it, Skipper. Now, anything else before we set off, only we do have a call to make, you said yourself.’
‘Quite so, okay Rosie, shall we try again?’ With this he pressed the start button and in an instant there was part of him that wished he hadn’t done so, the part he would like to think of as normal. Everything seemed to happen at once, day became night, night became day, images flashed across his eyes so fast he never got a chance to focus on any of them and then, he found himself in a most exquisitely relaxed state, euphoric in essence and quite impossible. Before he could get a grip on any one aspect of his present situation the voice of Rosie broke into his reverie.
‘Approaching destination.’
‘Ah!’ he sighed loudly.
