Target Rich Environment

  Jimmy began to cry. His parents had tried to talk him into honest work, like accounting or decorative beadwork. He should have listened to them. “I only got into that major because it was supposed to be super easy and I wanted to impress chicks by being all sensitive and stuff! Only the girls were all bossy. All they ever did was complain about manspreading and the patriarchy! Man, I don’t even know what a patriarchy is!”

  “The patriarchy can’t save you now, Jimmy. Because you’re here forever!” The supervisor cracked the whip. “Now, start calling some fools. Every day you meet your quota, you get a fresh bucket!”

  Tom Stranger found himself chained to a wall in a dungeon. He had been in a lot of dungeons over the years, and this one was actually rather nice, with hand-cut stone walls, vintage wall torches, a rather extensive collection of exotic torture devices, and . . . could it be? “Are those real giant plague-carrying rats?”

  “I had them flown in special just for you,” Jeff Conundrum replied. “They set a certain ambiance.”

  That was just like Conundrum. Go cheap on paying claims, and then blow all the profits on a top-of-the-line torture dungeon.

  “So here’s the dealio, Strangers on a Train. We’re going to kill you eventually, and it is going to be really painful, but we’re going to torture the names of your client list out of you first.”

  “That is proprietary information. An Interdimensional Insurance Agent would never share such things and violate their clients’ privacy.”

  Jeff snorted. “I opened a portal to the nether world at a science fiction convention already today. Do I look like I give a crap about not sharing clients’ private information? As soon as one of my goons gathers somebody’s info for a rate quote, I sell their secrets to the most ludicrously evil organizations I can find, like the KGB, or Google.”

  “The attack on KhanQuanCon, that was you?”

  “Well, yeah. I wasn’t covering those demons anymore, so I didn’t have to worry about liability. I figured best-case scenario I could zombify most of Nebraska, and use them as call center employees. Just imagine the savings!”

  “That is evil, even for you, Jeff.”

  Conundrum was obviously proud of himself. “You’ve not seen anything yet, Tom. Without you meddling, I’m going to revolutionize the insurance business. Heck, in this reality’s America, I got them to make health insurance mandatory, which made it more expensive, and then you can get fined for not having it!”

  “But . . . but that doesn’t even make any sense.”

  He grinned. “I know, right! It’s a conundrum!”

  Tom tugged on his chains, but they were too strong, and he was too injured to escape.

  “Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got work to do.” Jeff gestured at the waiting goon squad of professional torturers. “These guys are going to mess you up now. They’re the best torturers in the business. The guy in the black hood? He’s even a consultant on Eli Roth movies.”

  “Impressive.”

  Conundrum snapped his fingers as he walked away. “Get to work, boys.”

  “I’ll never talk, Conundrum.”

  “Oh, you’ll talk, believe me . . . Start with his bow tie.”

  Jeff Conundrum was super evil.

  A couple hours of soul-crushing cold calling later, Jimmy Duquesne was about to break. He just couldn’t take it anymore. This internship sucked balls.

  Now, Stranger & Stranger, that had been a sweet internship. Sure, he’d been super confused or thought he was going to die for most of it, but it had never been boring. Mr. Stranger was a cool boss. Plus a giant flying gundam robot was a dope ride. Jimmy figured that Interdimensional Insurance Agents got all the chicks. He didn’t know what it paid, but Mr. Stranger always had that pimp Men’s Warehouse look going on, so he had to be rolling in the benjamins.

  He also felt kind of bad that Mr. Stranger was going to get murdered, and figured he should do something about that. But he also didn’t want to get his headset stapled on permanently, so he’d not dared move from his cubicle.

  Jimmy risked looking over his shoulder. There was no sign of the call center supervisor. He’d wandered off to yell at someone else. Now was his chance to save the day.

  It was time to look inside himself and find his inner insurance agent.

  What would Tom Stranger do?

  Probably some bad ass karate shootery but, his earlier claims to the contrary, Jimmy knew he was lacking in that department. He had once lost a fight to a troop of Girl Scouts. In his defense, he’d thought those Thin Mints were free samples, and he’d tried to explain that through a mouthful of delicious cookies, but that hadn’t stopped the hail of tiny, unforgiving fists, and they’d chased him from the minimall.

  So he wasn’t much of a fighter . . . But Jimmy had snagged Mr. Stranger’s bitchin’ laser pistol when he’d tried to get him out of that net. So there was that.

  Jimmy pulled the CorreiaTech Combat Wombat out of his pants. Sadly, everything Jimmy knew about guns he’d learned from Call of Duty, and this thing had all sorts of buttons, switches, and levers on it. Since it could blow up dinosaurs, Jimmy was smart enough to not point it at any of his body parts. He thought about checking online to see if there was an instruction manual, but he knew Conundrum & Company monitored their call center employees’ Internet use. Some dude in the next cubicle over had been caught playing Candy Crush Saga, and when he’d gotten caught, it had been staple and bullwhip city!

  Luckily, Jimmy noticed a tiny button on the back of the pistol that had HELP on it. When he pushed it, a cool heavy metal riff played, then a holographic logo formed shimmering in the air.

  “Welcome to the CorreiaTech Combat Wombat plasma, laser, particle beam, missile, and explosive projectile system 4.0! Now with 70% more wombat! Please check out our other exciting CorreiaTech products, like Power Glove, Robo-Bear, A Sound That Kills, Atomic Pen, Tentacle-Proof Underwear, or Space Axe! Click here to learn more!”

  Jimmy was still getting used to all this groovy sci-fi stuff. A little hologram of a big dude materialized. He was cut, like super-ripped—he probably did CrossFit—and had a long flowing glorious mane of hair worthy of a White Snake video. He was smoking a cigar and had a voice like thunder.

  “Hi. I’m Larry Correia. You may know me as the ultra-powerful Interdimensional Lord of Hate, or from my hit web comic, The Yard Moose Chronicles. Welcome to this CorreiaTech instructional video. Warning. CorreiaTech products are not intended for use by sissies, liberals, or crybabies. Now, a word from our manatee. Take it away, Wendell.”

  The super handsome buffed guy disappeared, and a tiny holographic manatee appeared floating in Jimmy’s cubicle.

  “HOOOOOOOOON!” It bellowed.

  “Shhhh!” Jimmy looked around in a panic. Hopefully the supervisor hadn’t heard. “Keep it down, dude!”

  But it was just a recording. The imaginary laser manatee couldn’t actually hear him. It proceeded to give instructions on how to use the Combat Wombat. “MEEEEWHOOOO—” Luckily Jimmy found the volume controls and got it turned way down. That had been close.

  Only a bunch of other employees had heard the manatee’s instructions, and their heads automatically popped up over the tops of their cubicles like a bunch of prairie dogs who had sensed danger. He was made.

  The holographic manatee was holding a Combat Wombat in its flippers. It pushed a button and launched some missiles. “Flooooorp.” Another button and it was throwing lightning bolts. “Hoon.” Jimmy was trying to keep up, because he knew he was running out of time, but sadly, he didn’t speak manatee.

  There was an option for subtitles and other languages. Jimmy selected that and began scrolling through the available languages. “Darn it! No. I don’t speak Gangnam Style!” This was all very frustrating.

  “Wait! There’s English.” He tried to select his native language, but he fat-fingered the button, and the manatee started yelling at him in German.

  “Nein!” the manatee wagged one flipper disappr
ovingly over the Kill Everything button. “NEIN!”

  Of course, he’d had to go and pick the shoutiest language ever. The other employees were loudly muttering about how somebody else got to watch YouTube and how come they couldn’t. A bullwhip cracked. The supervisor was coming back down the aisle. Jimmy hadn’t actually read the employee handbook, but dinking around with weapons of mass destruction at work had to be way worse than Candy Crush.

  Jimmy had to get out of here, fast. He tried to stand up, only to forget that he was still chained to the chair. Clank. Then he realized that the chair had wheels! So Jimmy began to kick his feet against the carpet. He rolled himself out into the aisle. It wasn’t exactly a high-speed getaway, but it was a start. As Jimmy shuffle-kicked furiously backwards down the hall, the helpful manatee continued to educate him on how to use the ultra-deadly Combat Wombat.

  “Okay, let’s do this!”

  The holographic Wendell covered his eyes with his flippers.

  Jimmy flipped a lever and yanked the trigger. A brilliant blue beam instantly burned a flaming hole through a hundred cubicles, lanced up the ceiling, and blasted a hole through the roof. Sparks and flaming debris rained down. He hadn’t meant to do that. The manatee made it look so easy!

  The supervisor saw him and gave chase. “Where do you think you’re going, dumbass?”

  “Oh crap!” The office chair was hurtling along at a staggering one, maybe even two, miles an hour.

  “Schnell! Schnell!” urged the manatee.

  Jimmy was so distracted by the bullwhip and Betsy the staple gun that he didn’t see he was rolling directly for the stairs.

  Tom Stranger had been extremely fond of that bow tie. He shed a single manly tear as it disappeared into the flames of the torturer’s blowtorch.

  “That was simply uncalled for,” he told the torturers.

  “Give us your client list, and this can all stop.”

  Tom Stranger never thought of himself as a hero. Hero was a title reserved for real men of courage, like George Washington or Harry Dresden. Tom was a simple insurance agent, but he would rather die than betray the solemn trust of his clients.

  “Never.”

  The head torturer nodded. “I expected as much. Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Stranger.” He turned to one of his underlings. “Fetch my sack of rabid raccoons and my complete DVD collection of The View.”

  “Joy Behar is banned by the Geneva Convention.”

  “Not in this dimension.”

  Tom cringed. This was truly one of the worst dimensions ever.

  “You expect me to talk?”

  “No, Mr. Stranger, I expect you to die.” The torturers high-fived each other. It didn’t matter what reality you were in, torturers loved to use that line.

  Just then, Jimmy the Intern rolled down the stairs in an office chair in a most violent and haphazard manner. He collided with one of the torturers, who dropped the sack of rabid raccoons. It burst open. Vicious foaming mammals sprang forth and the torturers screamed as they were attacked.

  Tom had to admit he was rather surprised to see Jimmy attempting to rescue him. Perhaps he had underestimated him . . . But, of course, Jimmy was immediately set upon by raccoons.

  But that was okay, because Tom had only needed a distraction. While they had been tormenting his poor bow tie, he had been working on the lock’s mechanism with the picks subcutaneously implanted in his thumbs. The shackles fell away and Tom stepped free.

  The head torturer saw Tom heading his way and his eyes widened fearfully. “You’re free? Uh . . . I’m really super sorry, Mr. Stranger. It wasn’t anything personal.” He held up the DVD of The View defensively. “Conundrum ordered us to inflict these awful harpies on you, I swear. I had no choice.”

  “No one deserves Joy Behar.” Tom slugged the torturer in the face and left him to the raccoons.

  Jimmy was thrashing about with a raccoon gnawing on his arm. Tom removed the thrashing animal and placed it gently aside. “Thank you for rescuing me, Jimmy.”

  “I found my inner insurance agent, Mr. Stranger!”

  “Yes, it appears you have. I am sorry you were bitten by a rabid raccoon in the process.”

  “Yeah, man! That wicked hurt! Wait. Rabid? Dude, does that mean I’m going to gain its powers?”

  “No. You are thinking of Spiderman. Sadly, that is not how rabies or radioactivity works. Luckily, these do not appear to be werecoons, so there should be no lasting side effects . . . other than the prolonged series of extremely painful injections directly into your stomach, of course. Now, we must hurry before Conundrum escapes.” He helped Jimmy up. “Do you still have my Combat Wombat?”

  “I must have dropped it falling down the stairs, but don’t worry, Mr. Stranger. I did just like the imaginary glowing space manatee said and pushed the Kill Everything button nine times!”

  Over the screams of the torturers and chittering of the raccoons, Tom heard a dangerous beeping noise. He spotted his Combat Wombat lying on the floor. The warning light was blinking red.

  “We need to run away now, Jimmy.” When his intern didn’t react fast enough, Tom tossed him over one shoulder, and ran up the stairs.

  “Why are you carrying me?”

  “You set my Combat Wombat to self-destruct.”

  “That sounds bad. Is that bad?”

  “The explosion is approximately one Kilo-Grylls.”

  Tom ran as fast as his cybernetically-enhanced legs could carry them. Once clear of the stairs, he squished the supervisor, plowed through several cubicles, and didn’t even bother to see if the door was locked. Instead he just lowered one shoulder and made a Tom Stranger-shaped hole through it. In the lobby, either the security guard or the potted plants engaged them with small arms fire, but he didn’t slow down enough to check. Tom smashed through the front door and sprinted across the parking lot.

  “I’m not super good at math, but I watched Miami Vice. A kilo is a lot, right?”

  “Yes, Jimmy,” Tom panted as he ran across a field. Several cows were watching them curiously. He shouted at them in Angusian. “Flee, my bovine friends. The call center is about to explode.”

  “Moooo,” replied one of the cows—which roughly translated to thanks for the heads-up, insurance professional—as she took cover.

  Tom unceremoniously chucked Jimmy into a drainage ditch, and then he ducked down next to him. Jimmy peeked his head up over the edge. There was a small flash, a whump, and the call center shook just a bit as some smoke shot out the doors.

  “That didn’t seem so bad.”

  Jimmy didn’t realize that was just a single round of the Combat Wombat’s explosive ammo cooking off. There were another two hundred rounds in the magazine, and that wasn’t even getting into the missiles, area denial system, or spider mines. Tom placed one hand on Jimmy’s head and shoved him back down.

  Then it sounded like popcorn popping, but only if each individual kernel was filled with enough high explosives to level a house. Then the good stuff went off. And each of those micro warheads was sufficient to flatten a city block. Then the power cell went critical, and the flash could be seen from space. In fact, just then there was an astronaut aboard the International Space Station who was all like, “Holy crap, somebody just nuked Nebraska!”

  They slowly raised their heads over the edge of the ditch. Jimmy gawked at the expanding mushroom cloud. There was nothing but a giant crater where the Fail State call center had been.

  “That was ten Michael Bay movies’ worth of explosions, Mr. Stranger, but what about all those call center employees?”

  “They were telemarketers, Jimmy. No one will miss them.” Tom stood up and dusted off his suit. He hoped Jeff Conundrum had still been inside. If that were the case, then this was a fine day for insurance agents everywhere. “I am impressed. Despite your complete ineptitude, you believed in yourself enough to overcome all the odds and rescue me. That was very Kung Fu Panda of you.”

  “I sure did!” Jimmy said with pri
de. “Do you think I could maybe make it as an insurance agent now?”

  Tom thought it over. Perhaps Jimmy was not totally hopeless. “Let’s put it this way. If you gave me a customer satisfaction survey right now, I would have to give you at least a five. I am not mildly dissatisfied.”

  “Wow. Thanks, Mr. Stranger.” Jimmy grinned. Then his expression changed as he looked over Tom’s shoulder. “Look out!”

  Tom turned to see that Jeff Conundrum had survived the explosion and freed himself from the wreckage. He was aiming a pistol right at Tom’s head. Conundrum fired!

  Only Jimmy had stepped in the way and was struck instead. “Oooof!” He spun around and fell in the grass.

  Conundrum would have finished them off, except his cheap Commie Jerk Face knock-off of a Combat Wombat had jammed. He snarled, struck at the gun a few times in frustration, before dropping it and running away. “We’ll meet again, Stranger Than Fiction!”

  Tom knelt at Jimmy’s side. “I can’t believe you took a bullet for me.”

  “Yeah, I totally meant to do that. That wasn’t just me tripping and getting in the way, I swear. But damn, dude, getting shot really freaking hurts!”

  That was kind of the point. He patted Jimmy on the head. “There, there.”

  Jimmy coughed. “How about my customer service survey now?”

  “I would have to give you at least a six. I am now mildly satisfied.” That was one of the highest compliments Tom had ever given anyone.

  “I’m scared, Mr. Stranger. Dude, man, freak, I don’t want to die. I can see a light. I can totally see a light, Mr. Stranger!”

  “That’s because you are staring up at the sun, Jimmy.” Tom had already produced an emergency med kit, squirted healing nano jell into the bullet hole, and given Jimmy a shot full of painkillers. “It’s just a flesh wound. You’ll be perfectly fine.”

  Jimmy sat up. “Oh.” He looked down at the bloody hole in his Chico State t-shirt. “I’ve always heard chicks dig scars.”

  “That is true in every universe.”

  “Sweet. But, hey, if I’m not going to bleed to death or anything, you should totally go whoop that blue-haired fat guy’s ass.”