"Sailor Phone and the Communications Convergence Calamity", Chapter One
By Henry J. Cobb
$Id: sailor_phone_chp1.txt,v 1.3 1996/09/28 17:05:33 hcobb Exp $

Disclaimers:

This is an original story.  The heros are the property of their
respective owners and are used without permission.

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance between the villains and any
actual conspiracy to monopolize global communications is purely
coincidental.

No Sailor Scouts where harmed during production of this piece.

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On a nightstand sat a digital clock, an appointment book and a phone.

The clock displayed 08:03 PM.

The appointment book was filled with a precise script, three hours of
sleep each night, school attendance, board meetings, mecha design
sessions.  Every hour of every day was accounted for, except 8PM to 9PM,
which was blank for every day that week.

The phone sounded a distinctive ring.

A girl with long lavender hair answered it.  She lay on a bed next to
the nightstand.  She wore a pale blue nightgown and was surrounded by
schoolbooks, quarterly reports, technical journals and a selection of
very personal toys.  "Yes Eiko?"

"Uh Biko, problem 3B, what exactly does she mean by the symphony of the
interglacial periods?"

"Ha!, do you really expect me to point out the relationship of Shinji
Kimura ice poetry to Kobayashi art?"

"Thanks Biko, I knew it was something like that.  What do you think she
meant by the Soeishinsha comment today?"

"I'm sorry Eiko, I didn't catch that one.  I was, uh, distracted."

"I don't see what's so fascinating about the back of Shiko's head.  She
only has eyes for the window."

"She'll see me clearly enough, after I take over the world."

"If you're going to be naughty like that.  I'll have to punish you."

"Oh, and how do you plan to do that?"

"I'll spank you."

"Really?"

"Yes, first I'd tie you down on that Italian chair with your collection
of imported belts."

"Even the black ellskin?"

"Yes, that one goes just above the ankles."

At that point, a relay switched and a long chain of lines was activated.

The temple phone rang, but Skuld ignored it, as it had the distinctive
ring of a Goddess Relief Office call.

"So Izden, what do you think?  Is cable television over the Internet the
next big thing?  It'd free us from the monopoly of the cable television
companies.  Naturally, you'd need a cable-modem to get the required
bandwidth..."  Skuld continued to page through the latest issue of
Windows Webphony.

Izden attempted to signal his distress at her constant prattle by
rolling over and playing dead, in typical possum fashion, but she
ignored this.

When a clatter sounded in the hallway, he sprang from her futton and
pattered towards it.  He always had a nose for trouble, as he was
usually in it, and anything was better than Skuld's useless speculation.

"Izden, where are you going?"  Skuld reluctantly put the magazine aside
and stepped out of her room to behold Belldandy frozen as if trying to
say "Oh my!" and Izden shocked stiff next to the telephone receiver on
the floor, his normally beady little eyes now the size of tennis balls.

"Belldandy, Sis are you alright?"

Belldandy failed to react to Skuld's presence.  This was a bad sign.
She needed assistance from a source Skuld was normally reluctant to call
upon.  "Keiichi, Belldandy needs help!"

Skuld scooped her possum out of the way as Keiichi stormed through.  He
didn't even wipe the motorcycle grease from his hands before putting
them on Belldandy.

"Why don't you get her a cup of tea?"  Skuld suggested.  "After you've
washed your hands."

Keiichi didn't acknowledge the rebuke as he lead Belldandy to the
dinning room.

With Belldandy in earnest, if incompetent hands, Skuld lifted the
receiver and placed it to her ear, with all the care she'd show a
poisonous serpent.

At that moment, a pair of very sweaty schoolgirls put away their toys
and returned to the subject of schoolwork.

Biko: "So Eiko, what did Miss Ayumi have to say about Soeishinsha?"

Skuld: "Hello?"

Eiko: "She said something about linear extrapolation."

Skuld: "Hello, can you hear me?"

Biko: "The intersecting circles theorem?"

Eiko: "Yeah, that's it."

Biko: "She probably meant for us to use that on the perspective essay."

Skuld placed the phone back on the hook and lightly slapped Izden back
to awareness.

"Those girls!" He croaked.

"I know how much you hate work, especially homework." Skuld scolded.
"But this is overreacting, even for you."

The distinctive ring sounded again; Skuld answered it.  "Goddess Relief
Office, can I help you?"

Heavy breathing sounded over the line.

Slam!

Ring!

Several obscene calls followed quickly, but none of the callers
responded to anything she said.

"Izden, I think there's something wrong with the phone system."

"This is phony business alright."  He gave her a significant look.

Yes, it was up to her to track this down, but she needed for somebody to
answer the phone and generate a constant stream of events to follow.
"Urd, Belldandy's feeling a little down, could you answer the phone for
a few hours?"

Skuld retired to the bathroom.  Holding her hammer above her head, she
invoked "Ma Bell Power!"  As she spun around her simple goddess raiment
was striped away by lightning, to be replaced with the toolbelt and fuku
attire of Sailor Phone.

Once the discharges died down, Izden leapt up and draped himself around
her shoulders.

As she stepped into a vortex in the the bathtub, she commanded it. "Take
me to the Goddess Relief Office!"

Early morning Saturday, somewhere in New York, pigeons scattered as a
vortex formed in a birdbath.

Skuld, goddess of the future, patron saint of actuaries, in her Sailor
Phone transformation, jumped from the contained storm and glared in all
directions, hammer at the ready.

Her constant marsupial companion, Izden Possum, glanced about in a
slightly less sleepy manner than usual from her shoulder.  "All clear,
Phony" He said.

She ignored the familiarity, but her look of concern only deepened.
"This place is such a mess.  If sis'd see how overgrown the garden has
gotten while she's been chained to that mortal, it'd break her heart."

"Uh, we still haven't checked inside the office."  Izden looked at the
dark windows.

"Yes, I still have a job to do.  Evil lurks in the communications
infrastructure."  Sailor Phone stepped up to the door and entered the
security code.

Inside she found the Goddess Relief Office unoccupied, an undisturbed
layer of dust on the floor, several months of bills and junk mail next
to the door and an unique item vanished.

"The Karma Router is missing."  She said.

"The what?"  Izden asked.

"The Karma Router, it sits right here, connects up to this bank of T-1s,
filters through all the misplaced calls in the world and automagically
selects those cases most deserving of goddess intervention to send down
this line to the temple.  Instead they've connected our admin line to
it."

Tapping her headset to the line in question, Sailor Phone confirmed her
suspicions.  "Yes, the calls are coming through here."

"They must have snatched it months ago."  Izden said.  "We'll never find
it now."

"No." Sailor Phone corrected.  "It was snatched sometime in the past
week, and it's at the end of this line."

"What?"

"The dust is fake, go ahead and taste it, if you like, but its layout
does not correspond to the patterns of air circulation.  Also they
couldn't possibly afford the personnel to screen all the calls in the
world and select just the obscene ones to forward, so they're using the
router.  The only question is do they know how to use it?"

Izden wrinkled his snout in confusion.  "But you just said that they are
using it?"

"Obviously they know how to hook it up to phone lines, but it's
filtering function has been adjusted.  Was this an accidental
adjustment, while they were trying to figure it out, or is this some
sick joke they're pulling to lure me in?  I suspect the latter, as the
sudden surge in traffic as they switched from good to bad calls could
not have gone unnoticed.  It's a good thing they've left it connected
like this, because it took me months to build it, and I didn't write it
all down."

"Shame on you."

"We're off to the local C.O."  Sailor Phone picked Izden up.

"Aren't you going to fix this?"

"I can't fix the system without the router and if I cut the current
connection I'll loose the trail I'm following and tell them exactly
where I am."

Thirty minutes later, the scum on a very stale cup of coffee began to
spin.  Sailor Phone and Izden leaped from the vortex into a modest
office.

"Federal Bullies and Intimidators, Dirty Tricks Division, why am I not
impressed?"  Sailor Phone began to search through a file cabinet labeled
"Enemies File, destroy before reading!"

"So this is it?  The Feds are behind it all?"  Izden asked.

"No, this is a false lead."  She replied.  "How many obscene calls are
in progress at any one time?"

"There must be thousands, tens of thousands, I suppose."

"And yet, we're supposed to believe they're all monitored through this
single Centrex line?"

"Yeah!"  He thought for a moment.  "But, you knew that at the C.O., why
bother to follow an obvious red herring?"

"Curiosity mostly.  They wanted me to see this."  She pocketed a glossy
of John Kasich and closed the file.

"Do I have to remind you that's government property and he's evil, a
member of the Republican Guard?"

"Yes, but he's still a hunk."  The faraway look quickly left her eyes.
"Let's get back to the C.O. and follow the trail."

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Sailor Phone Says!

During the voiceover a montage of scenes cut from the dub are show.
    Skuld listening to the phone with her eyes bugging out.
    Sailor Phone and Izden being chased by FBI agents.
    Urd taking careful notes from the phone.

"If somebody calls you up and threatens you or says things that make you
feel bad, immediately notify your parent or legal guardian."

"Unless they are the ones doing it.  In that case your best choice is
probably Runaway Hotline."

"Sailor Phone says!"

Giggle.

	Henry J. Cobb	hcobb@slip.net          http://www.io.com/~hcobb
    Write a AMS spinoff and nobody will notice.
    Post a Ranma fic and you'll find the next two chapters in your mailbox.