The makeshift headquarters for the Primordial Earth Protectorate was an intricate balancing act between hopelessly inadequate and bluntly pathetic.
Built on secluded farmland at Cunningham's Gap in South East Queensland, it was an old and rickety, run-down Queenslander, a two-storey timber homestead with wrap-around verandas. The roof was rusted corrugated iron. The ivory white paint of the timber panelling had long since faded to cream yellow bone.
As for the surviving protectorate personnel, they were reduced to mostly a handful of older retirees, several alien interns from extraterrestrial universities and some civilian contractors with 'Beyond Top Secret Ultra Uber High' security clearances.
Acting Commandant Waterloo, sat at a teak desk in what was the master bedroom of the old Queenslander. It now served as the Acting Commandant's office.
Waterloo looked over the holographic displays of the remaining protectorate inventory and personnel. She let out a massive sigh, "Like seriously," she complained, "I should've stayed on holidays."
"You were lucky you were antiquing in the Fossicking universe Mam," remarked her assistant, an alien intern, "you were too far away for the protectorate SI to recall you to defend HQ."
Waterloo looked up at the intern as it floated in the corner of the room. It was from the habitable, nitrogen-oxygen atmospheric layer of a gas giant. Its appearance was indescribable, although if one attempted to describe it, well, it kind of looked like a dried-up jellyfish crossed with a beach ball, a pink garbage bag and a bloated puffer fish connected to a dozen whoopee cushions.
"Yes Bob, I am well aware of that," Waterloo remarked.
She continued to peruse the inventory and the small, meagre list of surviving personnel. She took off her glasses and ran her fingers through her short cut, ginger hair.
"I was planning on early retirement, after my holiday and then a bunch of Daemon-Shihtz bastards and Minger drop kicks, decided to gate crash the solar system and attack the headquarters for the Primordial Earth Protectorate."
"At least your predecessor," said Bob, "Commandant Scarecrow, initiated the self-destruct protocols."
"She was a good Commandant," Waterloo replied, "and she saved us all, the whole Bloke damn planet."
"I wish you wouldn't use the Lord, his fuggliness' name, in vain Mam."
"Oh, I do apologise," Waterloo replied sincerely, "I forgot that you're a happy patter."
"Yes mam, may treats be upon him," Bob gave somewhat of a bow, "have you had any success in contacting the Intergalactic Federation of Semi-Aquatic Guinea Pigs?"
"No, which is quite concerning."
"And what about from the Commonwealth of Human Posterity mam?"
"I can't reach them either," Waterloo said worryingly, "Something big is happening out there in the Pan Cosmos. For the moment, we appear to be on our own."
Waterloo drew her attention to the profiles of two retired agents. This time, she let out a very long and frustrated sigh.
"This is it?" she complained. "This is all we have left? Like seriously? Are you joking? Oh, you must be fudging joking. Not these two nincompoops, these wankers, total tossers, this pair of complete and total dickheads. Oh no, not these two, incompetent, foolhardy and utterly reckless morons. These buffoons? These boofheads? Really?"
Waterloo's rant went on for about five more hours, before she resided herself to the cold hard facts.
"Alright then," she said with grave acceptance, "if all we have are these two deadbeats, trigger happy drongos, then they'll need a chaperone."
"A chaperone Mam?" queried Bob.
"Yes, someone or something, we can trust."
"No disrespect intended Mam, but have you seen what is actually left of the protectorate outside?"
Bob used some kind of appendage that resembled silly string to draw open a curtain. A handful of old farts and an assortment of weird and shockingly horrifying extraterrestrial interns, busied themselves pitching tents and moving vehicles and equipment.
"We don't have anyone who is capable of wrangling two rogue, retired field agents Mam."
Waterloo scanned the inventory, "Oh goodie, it appears that we have an SBT-22."
"What is an SBT-22 Mam?"
"It's an old, long obsolete android," Waterloo pulled up the droid's schematics, "indistinguishable to a human being in appearance. They were recalled due to problems with their behavioural inhibitor chips. They were always a tad bit sketchy.
"In what ways Mam?" Bob asked.
Waterloo read the android's product information and reviews, "It seems that over time, stressful and traumatic situations could fry nano circuits on their motherboards…" she squinted her eyes and slowed down her reading, "much like synaptic pruning in children, such short circuiting could sometimes allow the SBT-22 to develop complex emotions and free will. In such events, an SBT-22 could override its initial programming and start to make decisions for itself.
"Not ideal I admit, but still, a work colleague from another department had one for over a decade and he couldn't praise it enough. Mind you," Waterloo snickered, "he worked in accounting so it wasn't a particularly exciting or eventful undertaking. It might actually explain…" pondered Waterloo, "why his SBT-22 ran away to become the lead singer of a prominent glam metal band. Mm… Now, considering their mass factory recall, it appears that this one is the last one in existence … and still in its original packaging, mind you.
"It's never been taken out of the box and activated; can you imagine that? Standing in a box like a life-sized Ken doll, just standing in that box, with lifeless eyes and a silly grin on its face, oh, for how long?" Waterloo perused the delivery date, "For just under, 10,000 Primordial Earth standard years."
"Is it combat capable mam?"
"Oh Bob," chuckled Waterloo, "these things were very robust and combat capable. An SBT-22 is exactly what we need to supervise those two, vandalistic dumb arses."
"But the factory recall mam?"
"Yes well, unfortunately, what choice do we have?"
"It appears none, Mam."
"Exactly. Right, let's talk to Lenny," Waterloo said.
She stood up from her desk and strolled towards the door. She was quite tall.
"Lenny, mam?" Bob asked.
"Yes, the plumber," she said quite casually, as she walked out of the room and into the hallway.
Bob followed behind, "What does a plumber have to do with an android mam?"
Bob's question was answered a few minutes later by Lenny himself. He was working on digging a trench to lay down some poop pipes when Waterloo and Bob were initially greeted by his bent over arse crack. Holy Grail by Hunters & Collectors, played from his Makita Max Portable Bluetooth speaker.
"I've been all over the place mate," said Lenny with a thick Aussie accent, laced with a lisp, "different galaxies and realities. Like mate," he said as he looked at Bob, "how many poop holes does your species have?"
"My species," replied Bob, "constantly excretes waste in a gaseous state from 12 membranous sacs attached to our lower bell."
"So, your poopers fart non-stop and that's what keeps you aloft in Earth's gravitational field?"
"That is correct, that and the fact that our flesh, although tough, is only about as dense as aerogel."
"Fascinating, well you see then, that's pretty different. Not all species poop or even fart through a single orifice like my species. Although, some of us like our politicians, can do it through an extra orifice as well."
Lenny let out a laugh followed by a snort.
"Anyway, like I said, been everywhere mate and I've worked on all manner of poopers, toilets and extraterrestrial thunderboxes. Yeah, I've encountered a whole range of plumbing technologies."
"Can you unpackage and activate an android Lenny?" asked Waterloo.
Lenny adjusted his cap and overalls, "Yeah, I can do that."
"Good, and that other job, is it done?"
Lenny smiled, "Do flying foxes righteously crap on the windscreens of Holdens? You bet. This way."
Lenny led Waterloo and Bob towards a beat up, Hino crane truck. A large contraption was bolted onto the top of the tray. A purple-coloured port-a-loo was also positioned on the ground a few metres from the truck. It was pimped out with junkyard technology and contained various metallic boxes, wires, conduits and contraptions protruding from the sides and top.
"You said yah needed a vehicle to travel across time and space Commandant," said Lenny, "it was a tough job but I managed to scrounge up some materials to retrofit this pooper," Lenny pointed to the purple porta-a-loo, "I was able to make some stabilised time crystals from sensory magic sand, blended with trilithium, superheated and condensed in a pottery kiln.
"We've loaded up the crystals into a faux capacitor we made from copper pipes and iron coat hangers. Yeah," added Lenny as he slapped the side of the purple porta-a-loo, "this big purple pooper is good to fly.
"Now, she's got a vintage but restored zero-point energy collector. The collector is flat as a tack, but once she's flung into a temporal wormhole, it'll charge up with enough joules of energy to boil away all the oceans on Earth, safely contained in a 10th dimensional storage chamber."
"May I ask," began Bob, "how a plumber such as yourself, acquired the knowledge to build a time machine?"
"Simple," replied Lenny, "you see, I did some contract work for the Slugarthians, big lumbering uglies the size of skyscrapers.
"Now despite their immense size, the Slugarthians lived on a dwarf planet no larger than Pluto. They had very little arable land and only one viable way to fertilise their crops."
"And that being?" asked Bob.
"Their poopers mate."
"Their poopers?"
"Yeah, you see every time a Slugarthian did a number nine in a Slugarthian dunny, their poop plopped into a temporal wormhole and travelled back in time to drop from the skies over their farmlands."
"Charming," commented Bob.
Lenny snickered followed by a snort, "Yeah, it literally showers poop on the Slugarthian home world. Bunnings umbrellas are a must."
The passenger door to the Hino opened and an extraterrestrial intern climbed out. It looked like a three-armed starfish, covered in fluffy, dark brown fur and with an assortment of spiderlike eyes in the centre.
"Did you fit that nitrous tank, Jack?" Lenny asked.
The intern replied with a series of hoots and barks while Lenny nodded.
"Yeah, I didn't think about that, good work Jack," Lenny turned his attention to Commandant Waterloo, "Jack's a Chocolate Starfish from blanet Nuggeto, quite a unique blanet, you know … a planet orbiting a black hole. Nuggeto orbits the black hole Tenebris Ineluctabile Rectumass, a black hole that is a whopping 247 million times more massive than our sun. Blanet Nuggeto has a close and stable orbit around Tenebris Ineluctabile Rectumass. Anyway…" continued Lenny as he scratched the sweat from his arse crack, "Jack's probably the best intern I've worked with yet. If we can acquire a reliable holographic emitter to cloak his appearance here on Earth, I might actually consider taking him on as an apprentice."
"What's the truck for?" asked Bob.
"Well, we'll run this old Hino down a quarter mile drag, that dirt track leading downhill," Lenny pointed to the track, "When the Hino hits 88 miles per hour," he pointed to the large contraption on the tray of the truck, "then this plutonium powered trebuchet will fling the pooper into the air. The added acceleration will trigger the faux capacitor to open a temporal wormhole."
"Is it capable of making a time jump to the end of the Cretaceous?" Waterloo asked.
Lenny smiled, "Commandant, this here pooper, can make it all the way back to the Hadean eon, and I might add, with not so much as a scratch or dint."
"Good," replied Waterloo, "now let's take a look at this SBT-22."