Originally Posted by Giligan
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Chapter 1
Robert Lackey opened his eyes.
Through his blurry eyes, he saw an enormous green ball hanging above him. Yelling maniacally, he leapt off the cot and onto the hard concrete floor. Glancing up, he realized that the janitor had played another practical joke on him in his sleep. Bugger that SSH! he thought viciously.
Meandering into the rudimentary bathroom, he walked up to the mirror and beheld his visage.
Ugh.
Like someone who had just been run over by a Challenger tank.
No, like someone who had just been run over by three Challenger tanks.
No, like someone who had been run over by three Challenger tanks and a bridging tank. Damn.
After showering and brushing his teeth, he walked out of his small quarters, and into the dark green Operations room. The computer screens were already booted up, showering the room in a dull glow, and he could soon see why: Jennifer Kiai, his computer/tech support guru, had gotten up before him.
Damn again. Now he owed her twenty quid. Why did he bet on who was more ambitious? He would surely fail.
He walked over to his station, and glanced at the computer. An email from Jennifer was in his inbox, the subject “need to update Her Highness on operation”.
“Jennifer, what’s this?” He called.
“You know the rules, Rob. Gotta keep the Queen in the loop.” She chuckled to herself.
Damn again. Jennifer was right. He had to update Her Highness on the status of Project Bleh. Two years ago, to combat superior wittiness from American shores, they had created the ultimate witty personage. They had cheated, though: their witty spy was actually a robot with an unlimited capacity for remarks.
And the prototype was named... Sqibbles.
Or so he was nicknamed. Officially, he was “Jat”, followed by a bunch of meaningless numbers.
And he stunk.
Not just bad, mind you; he really, really stunk. He was known to drop a bum dead in his tracks at 15 paces. The reason for this was, in the development phases of the project, they had needed an artificial skin for their robot. Dr. Melanie, an expert in the field of robotics, had been called. She produced an amazingly skin-like substance which would work for robots. Only one trouble. It turned green after three days.
Naturally, they turned to Melanie to fix the glitch in her formula. Only, she had taken her ill-gotten government gains and hopped a plane to Indonesia. So, having no scientist and no fake skin for their robot, they did the only thing that could be done: They replaced the fake skin with microwaveable oatmeal.
This worked for a while, but eventually, it rotted. Making Squibbles one foul dude. Still, concessions must be made, thought Robert.
“All right, punch up the screen, will you? I’ll give the old bag the scoop on what’s shaking.”
“Old bag!?!?!?” demanded Jennifer incredulously. “Was that some kind of anti-feminist remark?”
“Um, no....”
“WAS IT?!?!?!”
“No! It wasn’t! Really!” Agent Lackey felt cold sweat begin to drool down his forehead as Jennifer slowly extended her hand towards a large and deadly looking paper cutter.
“Well... okay.” She turned back to her station. “Screen is up.”
Thank God that’s over, thought Robert. And then he turned to the screen.
The enormous wall-mounted screen showed a young woman perched in an enormous throne, surrounded by heaps of gold. A crown sat lopsidedly on her head, as if it was about to fall off but hadn’t quite yet. White robes that were at least 200 sizes too big flowed off her body. Really, a peculiar scene.
A small green creature sat on the young woman’s lap, and the woman was popping chocolates into its smiling green mouth. Horrible. He glanced down at his feet and cleared his throat.
“Ahem.”
The girl looked up. “Ah, Robby-poos! My favorite little spy-handler, yes, you are!” She said this in a strange baby-talk.
Robert felt the sweat roll down his face once again as he turned to glance back at Jennifer. Good, she hadn’t overheard Queen Jessica’s remark. If she had, he would have been teased about it to no end.
“Um, yes, Your Majesty. If I may - “
“Yes, yes, give me your report in a minute. First, Iggy wants to say hi, don’t you, Iggy?”
The small green creature nodded enthusiastically, a little too enthusiastically, thought Robert. It hopped off Jessica’s lap, and waltzed over to the screen on the Queen’s end, until it was occupying the whole screen. It stared at Robert
And it smiled.
Well, this is a nice change, thought Robert. Maybe it does like me after all -
And then the creature opened its mouth and ejected green slop all over the screen.
Robert stared in horror as the creature, the image disfigured by the slop, waltzed back to Jessica, looking very happy with itself. Two attendants quickly started wiping off the screen, and Robert could hear Jessica baby-talking to Iggy. “Yes, you were a good little Iggy-poos, weren’t you? Yes, you were! Come here, and let’s let Uncle Rob give his report now.”
Robert shook his head incredulously.
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